Now Canonical is competing in that space, on the same hardware, through the same channels, and it might be able to make a buck doing so. Microsoft hasn't faced competition like that since OS/2 died.
True, but as far as I can see it's not exactly a huge success. And IBM was a far bigger threat that Canonical will probably ever be.
It's possible that might eventually change of course. Nothing is eternal, not even Microsoft's dominance of the desktop. But it will take a long time and a hell of a lot more money than 30 million in revenue to effect changes like that.
Here's to a new age of respect and mutual understanding with the rest of the world. May we all wake up quickly from the numbed daze of the past eight years and move forward.
MSFT reported revenue of $60.4 billion dollars for 2008. That comes out to about $165.5 million per day.
There are reasons why Microsoft may or may not feel threatened by things like Linux. Maybe netbooks. But I doubt a $30M company scares them much. In fact, I'd say they're much more worried about RedHat than Canonical - not because of their size, but because RH and Microsoft do really compete in the server market. How many Linux notebooks has Dell sold so far? Even by the lowered standards of Vista there's simply no comparison there.
As good as Apache is, it could use some competition. Apache also creates a sort of monoculture that is probably not very healthy (especially in conjunction with PHP).
I personally have been moving away from Apache and using lighttpd (and FastCGI) whenever possible with my Python applications.
These were images that met the requirements for non-free use on the English Wikipedia.
Don't blame us
I am not blaming you for anything other than accepting non-free images and then making it extremely difficult to tag the image correctly so it won't get deleted five minutes after being uploaded.
Their main problem is going to be making sure that none of the stuff people upload violates any copyright and conforms to their free/non-free usage guidelines. There are only so many user-generated videos that could find a place in an encyclopedia, so I assume most of what they'll see will be ripped from other places.
They spend enormous amounts of time "patrolling" uploaded images, placing them on special categories for later review and so on. And the processes in place don't help, either. The last time I tried the upload page for an image from the Cassini mission I was pretty much blown away how complicated it is to figure out how to tag a file to avoid having it be deleted on sight, even though the use permissions from the copyright owner were pretty clear.
If the Wikipedia bureaucracy is bad now, just wait for the Video Upload Patrol Group to form up. Oh the humanity.
It's idiotic to imply that only people who use.NET produce bad code. I've seen bad code on just about every mainstream language written for every mainstream platform in existence. At startups and established corporations alike.
For those interested, IBM is running a primer series on the new language/runtime features.
There's also this older (but still relevant) PEP that explains things that did not change between the 2.x series and 3.0.
Personally, I'm not looking forward to migrating existing code bases (especially non-trivial ones) to 3.0, but I'm planning to do all new development against it (of course assuming that the various packages I use have ports).
For Python trivia lovers, here the the actual moment in time when 3.0 was let loose on the world. I'm such a sentimental geek:)
For the life I me, I can't figure out what the choice of {waterfall vs. cyclic} has to do with {writing code that checks for error return codes vs. not}.
Nothing whatsoever. You can produce quality software with both of them.
The first one just takes twice as long, costs twice as long as is twice as aggravating to everyone involved. But companies (especially large ones) love it because it gives them fuzzy (but bogus) sensations of control and continuity.
Most of the teams I've had contact with inside the tools group at MS (in the last four years or so) use SCRUM.
I don't know how widespread that is in other divisions (say the MSN/Live folks or the Microsoft.com teams) but that clever comment in the submission is nothing more than an ignorant cheap shot.
Don't be so twitterish and make up crap about Microsoft. Get your facts straight or you just come across as an idiot.
First off, people in high-paying jobs have a lower marginal propensity to consume. It sounds absurd, but the single parent with a $40k job is spending almost their entire paycheck back into the economy just to survive. Someone who makes $120k is not spending 100% of their paycheck- not even close. They're putting a fair amount into long and short term savings.
The family that makes $120K also typically spend more just to "survive" in the sense that they have bigger mortgages, more expensive cars, higher public utility usage, etc.
And on the flip side, increased savings means banks have more money to shuffle around, which then translates into lower interest rates and makes it easier for people to borrow money for business ventures.
Small business owners are the largest borrowers in the US, not surprising considering small businesses make up for the majority of the economic output and activity in the country as well.
So people who save might be bad for the economy in the short term, but probably good in the long term.
You could give each citizen $1 million and let things take their course. That would cost you roughly $350 million
More like $360 trillion, right? That's substantially more than the entire GDP of the US. I think that's more than the GDP of all the countries combined.
I think I saw one of those chain letter emails that had this dumb claim on it a few weeks ago. I'm amazed that someone who posts on Slashdot would actually fall for that kind of thing.
I don't understand why this was modded down. It's inevitable that US corporations will find exciting new ways to outsource work to countries like India, China and Eastern Europe. That way they can claim a $0.03 per-share gain in their balance sheets and things like that.
For example, $BIG_CORP will say "we are saving money by contracting with IBM for all our IT support needs, weee!", and most people think that means the money and jobs stay in the US, when that really means IBM Global Services, which in turn really means IBM India. It's been done many times before. Even if the jobs are in the US, they're usually staffed by Indians on L2 visas.
I've stopped caring about how the US spends taxpayer money since I don't pay taxes there anymore, but any government investment like this should be accompanied by a strong oversight to avoid loopholes and waste. In any industry. Look at the appalling lack of accountability we're seeing now with the bailout.
There are only so many ways I can make a quick buck as a software developer. There are lots of other ways I can make a quick buck that don't involve software development. And I have other skills.
Making a quick buck is important when you're unemployed, even if parallel to that you're still doing contract SW or whatever. Software development is a bit like investment - it takes time for the money to start rolling in. If you have enough savings or a way to support yourself and/or your family then that might be a good alternative.
Let me give you an example. A girl that used to subcontract for me took a job as a senior dev at a company last year. Great gig, good pay and benefits. She got the shaft in November. Her fiance is still in school, and she was supporting him. Now he's had to drop classes and take a part-time job at a Lowe's or something like that, and she's working sales for her dad's construction company.
This is an extremely talented and creative developer, one of the best I've worked with. Young and full of energy. Even makes me feel old. But what is she supposed to do? Sit at her computer all day working on some app while her electricity, internet and heat get disconnected? She has rent to pay, debts to service. It's not as simple as you make it out to be, and even more complicated when you're talking about a family rather than just two kids who can eat ramen if necessary.
If you come up with the next big thing using your school's resources, then you need to come up with some sort of shared ownership agreement. I believe MIT does this?
For example, if you develop a cool new shared memory cache super-duper distributed hash algorithm that works only on massive clusters, and you use the school's clusters to do that, you're toast.
Simple, really? It's no different than the corporate world.
On the other hand, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you're on to something, then I suggest doing all that on your own time and on your own computer and network connection. Don't turn it in as homework or share it with your teachers.
Well If that stuff can't motivate you, you should just go deep throat a 9MM.
It will motivate me, but not in the sense that I'll sit down on the computer to think up the next big IM application while I get my power disconnected for lack of payment. It will motivate me to go out and sell fruit or wash cars or shovel coal. It will motivate me in many ways, most of which likely won't involve writing software.
There is a large segment of people you simply will not convert to alternative browsers. These you'll be lucky they at least upgrade IE, so in many ways IE8 is the only chance for having a majority of people using a standards-compliant browser.
I don't think being unemployed and unable to pay the rent of feed your family have a positive influence on creativity.
Beyond the college student "-1, Thinking About It" SourceForge project phase, real (useful) software development has to involve money at some point. There will definitely be less of that in the next few years.
Re:Was the cover designed by someone at Fark?
on
Ubuntu Kung Fu
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I understand there are actually seven ninjas in that picture.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but as far as I can see it's not exactly a huge success. And IBM was a far bigger threat that Canonical will probably ever be.
It's possible that might eventually change of course. Nothing is eternal, not even Microsoft's dominance of the desktop. But it will take a long time and a hell of a lot more money than 30 million in revenue to effect changes like that.
Thus my point that they are not particularly worried about Canonical itself, just about open source in general.
Here's to a new age of respect and mutual understanding with the rest of the world. May we all wake up quickly from the numbed daze of the past eight years and move forward.
I understood that to be revenue (not profit) but you're right, they should have specified what it was.
MSFT reported revenue of $60.4 billion dollars for 2008. That comes out to about $165.5 million per day.
There are reasons why Microsoft may or may not feel threatened by things like Linux. Maybe netbooks. But I doubt a $30M company scares them much. In fact, I'd say they're much more worried about RedHat than Canonical - not because of their size, but because RH and Microsoft do really compete in the server market. How many Linux notebooks has Dell sold so far? Even by the lowered standards of Vista there's simply no comparison there.
As good as Apache is, it could use some competition. Apache also creates a sort of monoculture that is probably not very healthy (especially in conjunction with PHP).
I personally have been moving away from Apache and using lighttpd (and FastCGI) whenever possible with my Python applications.
More choices are always better.
He doesn't. I simply mentioned that his hardware will run it, because he ended his post with something like "this runs everything fine, except Vista".
A two year old machine with 2 gigs of RAM will run Vista just fine.
These were images that met the requirements for non-free use on the English Wikipedia.
I am not blaming you for anything other than accepting non-free images and then making it extremely difficult to tag the image correctly so it won't get deleted five minutes after being uploaded.
Their main problem is going to be making sure that none of the stuff people upload violates any copyright and conforms to their free/non-free usage guidelines. There are only so many user-generated videos that could find a place in an encyclopedia, so I assume most of what they'll see will be ripped from other places.
They spend enormous amounts of time "patrolling" uploaded images, placing them on special categories for later review and so on. And the processes in place don't help, either. The last time I tried the upload page for an image from the Cassini mission I was pretty much blown away how complicated it is to figure out how to tag a file to avoid having it be deleted on sight, even though the use permissions from the copyright owner were pretty clear.
If the Wikipedia bureaucracy is bad now, just wait for the Video Upload Patrol Group to form up. Oh the humanity.
It's idiotic to imply that only people who use .NET produce bad code. I've seen bad code on just about every mainstream language written for every mainstream platform in existence. At startups and established corporations alike.
For those interested, IBM is running a primer series on the new language/runtime features.
There's also this older (but still relevant) PEP that explains things that did not change between the 2.x series and 3.0.
Personally, I'm not looking forward to migrating existing code bases (especially non-trivial ones) to 3.0, but I'm planning to do all new development against it (of course assuming that the various packages I use have ports).
For Python trivia lovers, here the the actual moment in time when 3.0 was let loose on the world. I'm such a sentimental geek :)
Well then, thank god for mod points <g>
Relax, seriously. I have my own personal stalker that occasionally spends all his mod points and shells out 5 "overrated" hits. No big deal.
Nothing whatsoever. You can produce quality software with both of them.
The first one just takes twice as long, costs twice as long as is twice as aggravating to everyone involved. But companies (especially large ones) love it because it gives them fuzzy (but bogus) sensations of control and continuity.
Most of the teams I've had contact with inside the tools group at MS (in the last four years or so) use SCRUM.
I don't know how widespread that is in other divisions (say the MSN/Live folks or the Microsoft.com teams) but that clever comment in the submission is nothing more than an ignorant cheap shot.
Don't be so twitterish and make up crap about Microsoft. Get your facts straight or you just come across as an idiot.
The family that makes $120K also typically spend more just to "survive" in the sense that they have bigger mortgages, more expensive cars, higher public utility usage, etc.
And on the flip side, increased savings means banks have more money to shuffle around, which then translates into lower interest rates and makes it easier for people to borrow money for business ventures.
Small business owners are the largest borrowers in the US, not surprising considering small businesses make up for the majority of the economic output and activity in the country as well.
So people who save might be bad for the economy in the short term, but probably good in the long term.
More like $360 trillion, right? That's substantially more than the entire GDP of the US. I think that's more than the GDP of all the countries combined.
I think I saw one of those chain letter emails that had this dumb claim on it a few weeks ago. I'm amazed that someone who posts on Slashdot would actually fall for that kind of thing.
I don't understand why this was modded down. It's inevitable that US corporations will find exciting new ways to outsource work to countries like India, China and Eastern Europe. That way they can claim a $0.03 per-share gain in their balance sheets and things like that.
For example, $BIG_CORP will say "we are saving money by contracting with IBM for all our IT support needs, weee!", and most people think that means the money and jobs stay in the US, when that really means IBM Global Services, which in turn really means IBM India. It's been done many times before. Even if the jobs are in the US, they're usually staffed by Indians on L2 visas.
I've stopped caring about how the US spends taxpayer money since I don't pay taxes there anymore, but any government investment like this should be accompanied by a strong oversight to avoid loopholes and waste. In any industry. Look at the appalling lack of accountability we're seeing now with the bailout.
IANAL, but she might be right.
There are only so many ways I can make a quick buck as a software developer. There are lots of other ways I can make a quick buck that don't involve software development. And I have other skills.
Making a quick buck is important when you're unemployed, even if parallel to that you're still doing contract SW or whatever. Software development is a bit like investment - it takes time for the money to start rolling in. If you have enough savings or a way to support yourself and/or your family then that might be a good alternative.
Let me give you an example. A girl that used to subcontract for me took a job as a senior dev at a company last year. Great gig, good pay and benefits. She got the shaft in November. Her fiance is still in school, and she was supporting him. Now he's had to drop classes and take a part-time job at a Lowe's or something like that, and she's working sales for her dad's construction company.
This is an extremely talented and creative developer, one of the best I've worked with. Young and full of energy. Even makes me feel old. But what is she supposed to do? Sit at her computer all day working on some app while her electricity, internet and heat get disconnected? She has rent to pay, debts to service. It's not as simple as you make it out to be, and even more complicated when you're talking about a family rather than just two kids who can eat ramen if necessary.
If you come up with the next big thing using your school's resources, then you need to come up with some sort of shared ownership agreement. I believe MIT does this?
For example, if you develop a cool new shared memory cache super-duper distributed hash algorithm that works only on massive clusters, and you use the school's clusters to do that, you're toast.
Simple, really? It's no different than the corporate world.
On the other hand, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you're on to something, then I suggest doing all that on your own time and on your own computer and network connection. Don't turn it in as homework or share it with your teachers.
It will motivate me, but not in the sense that I'll sit down on the computer to think up the next big IM application while I get my power disconnected for lack of payment. It will motivate me to go out and sell fruit or wash cars or shovel coal. It will motivate me in many ways, most of which likely won't involve writing software.
There is a large segment of people you simply will not convert to alternative browsers. These you'll be lucky they at least upgrade IE, so in many ways IE8 is the only chance for having a majority of people using a standards-compliant browser.
I don't think being unemployed and unable to pay the rent of feed your family have a positive influence on creativity.
Beyond the college student "-1, Thinking About It" SourceForge project phase, real (useful) software development has to involve money at some point. There will definitely be less of that in the next few years.
I understand there are actually seven ninjas in that picture.