Actually, instead of quitting, why don't you posse up a bunch of experienced developers let them have a chat with your organization's management? It's obvious to me that your lead developer is abusing his authority and using the project to do esoteric R&D style development when he should be busy putting together applications.
There are a handful of people in the world who are actually are capable of coding a secure web server and, no offense, but I doubt they work for your employer.
I would agree with you, except for the fact that I'm one of their paying customers ($30/year) and I also got this letter from them. Granted, $30 is no king's ransom, but I really do wish they would lay off on the advertising with their paying customers at least. I suspect that they would have a few more takers on the paid plan if they did that.
.. but the fact remains that people do try to use their resources wisely, no matter who they are. If sending an email weren't free and it cost some little bit of money to send (say 1 cent USD or whatever is reasonable in the local currency), then it automatically becomes infeasible to spam indiscriminately. Legitimate bulk email will still happen, just not for free. I can foresee that charities and religious organizations would be able to use a bulk discounted rate, just like they can today.
In the meantime, the rest of us will happily continue going on our merry way, hardly even noticing the change, except for one thing: we'll stop getting so much spam.
As for your view on how to achieve utopia, I agree with you. If everyone just stopped clicking on those stupid things, then spam would go away. Likewise, if everyone were honest, there would be no stealing. If everyone treated their fellow human beings properly, there would be no war, hunger, or oppression. If only....
The only thing perfect about this world is that we all stand on equal ground when it comes to finding our ultimate reality. None of us have an advantage at that and all the material goods in the world won't get you ahead there either. You may as well take comfort in that because, until "utopia" exists, we'll just have to get by with systems of economics instead.
I fear it's going to be back to Mandrake for us on the servers.:-(
Just out of curiosity, how bad or good is that? I've always thought of Mandrake as a desktop distro and not as a server distro (at least, out of the box obviously any Linux distro can be a server if you hack at it enough).
Better yet, given the fact that Oracle is a total PITA to install on Linux, and the fact that most Oracle servers (servers that I've seen anyway) run only Oracle to prevent support issues, would it be too much to ask Oracle to just provide a turn key Linux distro with Oracle correctly configured on it and a list of hardware the distro was tested on?
This would be a god-send for smallish shops that would like to use Oracle on Linux but do want want to futz around with obscure and generally otherwise useless settings in the guts of Oracle and Linux.
Does something like this already exist and I somehow missed it?
You have CD-R's that last 20 years? tell me where to find these, mine start to go downhill after about 12 months. And they aren't nearly as scratch resistant.
What is the practical useful life of the typical CDR? I'm talking about CDRs that aren't used that often (maybe once a month at most), don't get abused, and are stored in a nice sleeve in a CD case. I've often wondered about this, so if you could provide insight about this, it would be appreciated.
You do have a choice with PC games. Seriously, just don't buy and play games that do that. Really, how much more fun is Halo on the PC anyway? Or Doom3? My opinion is that one is better off spending time with games that can either degrade gracefully to somewhat older hardware (anything older than 3 years or so and you're kind of out there on your own anyway) or are developed more around being a compelling game (through storyline and/or gameplay). The only reason you would "need" a new graphics card or CPU is to play games that focus gratuitously on graphics. The only exception I can think of would be for games that use a lot of CPU for the AI, but those seem to be in extremely short supply anyway.
Anyway, think about that when you next pass the aisle of $10 games at your local outlet. Those games are 1/5th the typical cost of a new game, will run on hardware that probably costs less than 1/5th of a new machine, and those games still rock if you can focus less on graphics and more on gameplay.
Personally though, I think many people are afraid to go this route. Gaming is a social activity after all, and if everyone is focusing on the new games, then one might fear being left behind by the pack.
I don't think you really need to drop Red Hat, unless you'd like to. Fedora seems like a good answer to the free beer Linux desktop question, though I haven't tried it yet and can not vouch for it. If you'd like to pay for a Red Hat desktop solution, you could do that too (FYI - Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS is now $179.00).
I think the bottom line here is that people who want free beer Linux distributions will always have options available to them. But, you'll get what you pay for in the long term. You'll have to decide whether that's a problem for your situation.
I don't know what the other distro providers will be doing, but I think that the Red Hat move is a sea change. Eventually, you'll just have to fork over money for distributions that are easy to update and have specific feature sets. We've always known that open source distributions cost money to make and we're just being asked to pay our part of the bill now. You'll always be able to build a distro from source, but most people would rather just pay the few $ instead of go through all that work.
Anyway, that's just my $0.02. The bottom line is that I really wouldn't worry about it at all.
You are correct of course. However, the value of that effort would not be very high. Why not?
Well, the bulk of RH users are spoiled by auto-updates available directly from RH. This means that systems get updated with no fuss on a regular basis. Not only that, but RH puts significant effort into adding value into the distro. This means that anyone who cobbles together a RH-knockoff distro will always have to play catch up just to remain relevant. Next there is the issue of funding. You can download the source code, compile it, put it together into a distro, test it, and image it; all for very little additional outlay (aside from your time). Put that beast up for download though, and you will finally start costing someone some money. Finally, there is the RH trademark. Which distro are you going to trust: Red Hat or Joe Blow Distro.
Open source is a formidable trump card against organizations that would abuse their position of trust and power in the software world to make profits in an unethical fashion. We should recognize though, that until organizations such as Red Hat do profit through unethical means, that they do indeed deserve to profit from their efforts. Open source does not always mean free beer, but it should always mean free speech. Ultimately, should the open source community become disgruntled enough with a given open source vendor, we could always take back the power we have ceded to them. It would take time, and could be painful, but at least it's possible. Such a source of action is not possible with proprietary software though.
Keep in mind, of course, that with larger organisations and site licenses there are valid contracts, signed sealed and delivered, this is only an issue when you go to the store and buy a copy yourself.
Yeah, I'm kind of afraid that companies like Microsoft will finally take radical steps around EULAs. How could you dispute a EULA which you are required to read, intitial each page of, and sign before you can even buy a computer or any other software package? That would be totally above-board and I imagine that once Microsoft bar-arms retailers into the practice that everyone else would get a free ride on the practice. It does represent too much visibility for software publishers current tastes, but once you get the population used to it and make the practice standard, it would be game over. Maybe this violates the UCC, but they seem to have managed to work around that already.
Sorry, I'm no lawyer either. However, I have (admittedly vague) recollection of EULAs already having been tested in court at least once. Do reply if you find what I'm alluding too; I can't research it now because I'm not in the country.
You just described the majors problems with EULAs. And yet, somehow, those are supposed to be legit and supported by precedent in a US court of law.
Are you a lawyer? Are you a good one? If so, then please do us all a favor and get software publishers back into the UCC fold and EULAs declared legally to be what we already know they are: toilet paper.
Resources? Oh, we did away with that term years ago. We just call them FTEs (Full Time Equivalents). An FTE is approximately equal to one butt filling one chair for about 2080 hours a year.
I have one. You could have one too. http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?phon eid=166765
There's probably even newer phones than this, but this is the one I have, and I like it. As far as it being a MP3 player, I haven't tried that out. It *should* work for that, I just haven't bothered to try.
Hmmmph.. I guess that just reinforces the approach I use. I have a stock resume I use for everything, but I customize it for every opportunity for which I interview. Also, a custom cover letter or personal contact at each organization is pretty much required these days. Nothing cuts through the HR/interview mill crap like specifically pointing out how I will relieve their pain or add to the bottom line. If I can't get someone's individual attention for at least a few minutes, it really doesn't matter how qualified I am.
It's ironic though that you may very well have thrown out the best candidate. I think that the assumption about the general resume format indicating a willingness to jump ship is somewhat presumptuous. You really have to look at work history and references to get a feeling for that. However, who's got the time to sort through the work histories of 500 candidates who couldn't be bothered to produce a custom cover letter + resume?!
However: what do you recommend instead of advertising for them? We're talking about the free version of Mandrake here. You don't have to buy the product with your $$$. Instead you 'buy' it with your eyeballs. But if you don't like it, just buy the retail version.
Everyone working on Mandrake deserves to be paid too. They have families to feed, hobbies to support, and children to send to college too. Expecting them to work for free is just plain wrong.
Maybe you don't intend for them to work for free, but that's where complaints like this lead.
As for the advertising on police cars, etc., this is the same issue; just a different flavor. Every time a local referendum in a community for additional taxes to support elevated services fails, they get that much closer to pimping themselves for advertisers in order to pay for services. The alternative is to shut down the service in question or reduce it to an unacceptable (to most people) level..
The commercialization of the world can be crass and annoying, I agree. But the marks or commercialization are the by-product of a world-wide market economy, one that hasn't even matured and reached sustainability yet. Until sustainability is reached, or something better comes along, get used to it.
Nice post! I don't know that I agree with all of your logic, but you present a good case. Interesting.... I hope I see some debate around your message.
Re: DRM - Yeah, I agree. But I can't think of a scheme whereby eBooks could be secured against unrestrained copying. DRM seems to be the only viable avenue. Tying an eBook to a given device seems like a bad idea. Not protecting the book at all seems like a bad idea. Heck, the best idea I have right now would be to personalize the eBook's content with the identity of the purchaser. Hopefully, that person would have enough shame to not copy the eBook all over then. Other than that, I just don't have a good alternative to DRM. That's unfortunate, because I think a lot of big brother syle abuse could occur with DRM.
You seem to agree that they think the forums reflect a poor game experience quality overall. True? If so, why are you wasting time with this game? I'm not trolling here, but I am curious why people spend more perfectly good time playing a game that seems to suck so bad. I mean, yeah, you spent the $50+ and nothing can be done about that. But why dump more time into it anyway?
..thousands upon thousands of eBooks on a single CD. Imagine the entire Harry Potter collection on your PDA. Imagine never having to lose books to a flood, fire, or your dog's incontinent bladder.
Yeah, there are downsides to eBooks, but there are definite upsides too. The future could include eBook re-releases of books long out of print. With readers (e.g. a Palm or Pocket PC (more expensive)) technology within most people's price point, it really is viable and profitable.
I hope paper books never go away. But I love my eBooks too! Try it, you might just like it.
Jeez, two messages in one day pimping JBuilder. I don't even work for them!
Anyway, JBuilder rocks. It rolls. It totally owns. Everything else in the Java world sucks by comparison.
Is that clear enough for you?
Oh, and I wouldn't consider.NET and Java to be competitors, for the most part. They cater to different cultures. Yeah, they do solve a lot of the same problems, but that really isn't relevant in my experience.
I can't speak for VC, Netbeans, or Eclipse as I haven't used them extensively, but JBuilder has been the cat's meow for us on the project I'm on now. I've got everything I had in VS.NET and a little more. Having also earned my chops in.NET, I can tell you that the big difference between them (aside from.NET vs. Java) is in ease of setup. It was a bear to get JBuilder 8 SE set up to do server process debugging in Tomcat and Tapestry. VS.NET can be a bear to set up too, but only as the exception, not the rule.
Either environment is a dream to use. I sometimes miss the simplicity of VB6 or Python, but those really aren't options for me anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, instead of quitting, why don't you posse up a bunch of experienced developers let them have a chat with your organization's management? It's obvious to me that your lead developer is abusing his authority and using the project to do esoteric R&D style development when he should be busy putting together applications.
There are a handful of people in the world who are actually are capable of coding a secure web server and, no offense, but I doubt they work for your employer.
Good luck!
I would agree with you, except for the fact that I'm one of their paying customers ($30/year) and I also got this letter from them. Granted, $30 is no king's ransom, but I really do wish they would lay off on the advertising with their paying customers at least. I suspect that they would have a few more takers on the paid plan if they did that.
.. but the fact remains that people do try to use their resources wisely, no matter who they are. If sending an email weren't free and it cost some little bit of money to send (say 1 cent USD or whatever is reasonable in the local currency), then it automatically becomes infeasible to spam indiscriminately. Legitimate bulk email will still happen, just not for free. I can foresee that charities and religious organizations would be able to use a bulk discounted rate, just like they can today.
In the meantime, the rest of us will happily continue going on our merry way, hardly even noticing the change, except for one thing: we'll stop getting so much spam.
As for your view on how to achieve utopia, I agree with you. If everyone just stopped clicking on those stupid things, then spam would go away. Likewise, if everyone were honest, there would be no stealing. If everyone treated their fellow human beings properly, there would be no war, hunger, or oppression. If only....
The only thing perfect about this world is that we all stand on equal ground when it comes to finding our ultimate reality. None of us have an advantage at that and all the material goods in the world won't get you ahead there either. You may as well take comfort in that because, until "utopia" exists, we'll just have to get by with systems of economics instead.
I fear it's going to be back to Mandrake for us on the servers. :-(
Just out of curiosity, how bad or good is that? I've always thought of Mandrake as a desktop distro and not as a server distro (at least, out of the box obviously any Linux distro can be a server if you hack at it enough).
Better yet, given the fact that Oracle is a total PITA to install on Linux, and the fact that most Oracle servers (servers that I've seen anyway) run only Oracle to prevent support issues, would it be too much to ask Oracle to just provide a turn key Linux distro with Oracle correctly configured on it and a list of hardware the distro was tested on?
This would be a god-send for smallish shops that would like to use Oracle on Linux but do want want to futz around with obscure and generally otherwise useless settings in the guts of Oracle and Linux.
Does something like this already exist and I somehow missed it?
Ok, I get it. I just thought you knew about some PPC or Palm port of the game and that piqued my interest.
:)
Rats!
I went and looked. I did not see a version of the game for any PDA. Did I miss something?
You have CD-R's that last 20 years? tell me where to find these, mine start to go downhill after about 12 months. And they aren't nearly as scratch resistant.
What is the practical useful life of the typical CDR? I'm talking about CDRs that aren't used that often (maybe once a month at most), don't get abused, and are stored in a nice sleeve in a CD case. I've often wondered about this, so if you could provide insight about this, it would be appreciated.
You do have a choice with PC games. Seriously, just don't buy and play games that do that. Really, how much more fun is Halo on the PC anyway? Or Doom3? My opinion is that one is better off spending time with games that can either degrade gracefully to somewhat older hardware (anything older than 3 years or so and you're kind of out there on your own anyway) or are developed more around being a compelling game (through storyline and/or gameplay). The only reason you would "need" a new graphics card or CPU is to play games that focus gratuitously on graphics. The only exception I can think of would be for games that use a lot of CPU for the AI, but those seem to be in extremely short supply anyway.
Anyway, think about that when you next pass the aisle of $10 games at your local outlet. Those games are 1/5th the typical cost of a new game, will run on hardware that probably costs less than 1/5th of a new machine, and those games still rock if you can focus less on graphics and more on gameplay.
Personally though, I think many people are afraid to go this route. Gaming is a social activity after all, and if everyone is focusing on the new games, then one might fear being left behind by the pack.
I don't think you really need to drop Red Hat, unless you'd like to. Fedora seems like a good answer to the free beer Linux desktop question, though I haven't tried it yet and can not vouch for it. If you'd like to pay for a Red Hat desktop solution, you could do that too (FYI - Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS is now $179.00).
I think the bottom line here is that people who want free beer Linux distributions will always have options available to them. But, you'll get what you pay for in the long term. You'll have to decide whether that's a problem for your situation.
I don't know what the other distro providers will be doing, but I think that the Red Hat move is a sea change. Eventually, you'll just have to fork over money for distributions that are easy to update and have specific feature sets. We've always known that open source distributions cost money to make and we're just being asked to pay our part of the bill now. You'll always be able to build a distro from source, but most people would rather just pay the few $ instead of go through all that work.
Anyway, that's just my $0.02. The bottom line is that I really wouldn't worry about it at all.
You are correct of course. However, the value of that effort would not be very high. Why not?
Well, the bulk of RH users are spoiled by auto-updates available directly from RH. This means that systems get updated with no fuss on a regular basis. Not only that, but RH puts significant effort into adding value into the distro. This means that anyone who cobbles together a RH-knockoff distro will always have to play catch up just to remain relevant. Next there is the issue of funding. You can download the source code, compile it, put it together into a distro, test it, and image it; all for very little additional outlay (aside from your time). Put that beast up for download though, and you will finally start costing someone some money. Finally, there is the RH trademark. Which distro are you going to trust: Red Hat or Joe Blow Distro.
Open source is a formidable trump card against organizations that would abuse their position of trust and power in the software world to make profits in an unethical fashion. We should recognize though, that until organizations such as Red Hat do profit through unethical means, that they do indeed deserve to profit from their efforts. Open source does not always mean free beer, but it should always mean free speech. Ultimately, should the open source community become disgruntled enough with a given open source vendor, we could always take back the power we have ceded to them. It would take time, and could be painful, but at least it's possible. Such a source of action is not possible with proprietary software though.
Keep in mind, of course, that with larger organisations and site licenses there are valid contracts, signed sealed and delivered, this is only an issue when you go to the store and buy a copy yourself.
Yeah, I'm kind of afraid that companies like Microsoft will finally take radical steps around EULAs. How could you dispute a EULA which you are required to read, intitial each page of, and sign before you can even buy a computer or any other software package? That would be totally above-board and I imagine that once Microsoft bar-arms retailers into the practice that everyone else would get a free ride on the practice. It does represent too much visibility for software publishers current tastes, but once you get the population used to it and make the practice standard, it would be game over. Maybe this violates the UCC, but they seem to have managed to work around that already.
Sorry, I'm no lawyer either. However, I have (admittedly vague) recollection of EULAs already having been tested in court at least once. Do reply if you find what I'm alluding too; I can't research it now because I'm not in the country.
Later!
You just described the majors problems with EULAs. And yet, somehow, those are supposed to be legit and supported by precedent in a US court of law.
Are you a lawyer? Are you a good one? If so, then please do us all a favor and get software publishers back into the UCC fold and EULAs declared legally to be what we already know they are: toilet paper.
Thanks in advance!
Resources? Oh, we did away with that term years ago. We just call them FTEs (Full Time Equivalents). An FTE is approximately equal to one butt filling one chair for about 2080 hours a year.
:+)
Feel better?
I have one. You could have one too. http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?phon eid=166765
There's probably even newer phones than this, but this is the one I have, and I like it. As far as it being a MP3 player, I haven't tried that out. It *should* work for that, I just haven't bothered to try.
Hmmmph.. I guess that just reinforces the approach I use. I have a stock resume I use for everything, but I customize it for every opportunity for which I interview. Also, a custom cover letter or personal contact at each organization is pretty much required these days. Nothing cuts through the HR/interview mill crap like specifically pointing out how I will relieve their pain or add to the bottom line. If I can't get someone's individual attention for at least a few minutes, it really doesn't matter how qualified I am.
It's ironic though that you may very well have thrown out the best candidate. I think that the assumption about the general resume format indicating a willingness to jump ship is somewhat presumptuous. You really have to look at work history and references to get a feeling for that. However, who's got the time to sort through the work histories of 500 candidates who couldn't be bothered to produce a custom cover letter + resume?!
We got 500+ resumes, of which 90% were developers, looking for anything out there. These were automatically pitched.
I found this statement a bit confusing. Why did you pitch those resumes? Were they not qualified?
I share your distaste for advertising.
However: what do you recommend instead of advertising for them? We're talking about the free version of Mandrake here. You don't have to buy the product with your $$$. Instead you 'buy' it with your eyeballs. But if you don't like it, just buy the retail version.
Everyone working on Mandrake deserves to be paid too. They have families to feed, hobbies to support, and children to send to college too. Expecting them to work for free is just plain wrong.
Maybe you don't intend for them to work for free, but that's where complaints like this lead.
As for the advertising on police cars, etc., this is the same issue; just a different flavor. Every time a local referendum in a community for additional taxes to support elevated services fails, they get that much closer to pimping themselves for advertisers in order to pay for services. The alternative is to shut down the service in question or reduce it to an unacceptable (to most people) level..
The commercialization of the world can be crass and annoying, I agree. But the marks or commercialization are the by-product of a world-wide market economy, one that hasn't even matured and reached sustainability yet. Until sustainability is reached, or something better comes along, get used to it.
Nice post! I don't know that I agree with all of your logic, but you present a good case. Interesting.... I hope I see some debate around your message.
Well done!
Re: DRM - Yeah, I agree. But I can't think of a scheme whereby eBooks could be secured against unrestrained copying. DRM seems to be the only viable avenue. Tying an eBook to a given device seems like a bad idea. Not protecting the book at all seems like a bad idea. Heck, the best idea I have right now would be to personalize the eBook's content with the identity of the purchaser. Hopefully, that person would have enough shame to not copy the eBook all over then. Other than that, I just don't have a good alternative to DRM. That's unfortunate, because I think a lot of big brother syle abuse could occur with DRM.
You seem to agree that they think the forums reflect a poor game experience quality overall. True? If so, why are you wasting time with this game? I'm not trolling here, but I am curious why people spend more perfectly good time playing a game that seems to suck so bad. I mean, yeah, you spent the $50+ and nothing can be done about that. But why dump more time into it anyway?
..thousands upon thousands of eBooks on a single CD. Imagine the entire Harry Potter collection on your PDA. Imagine never having to lose books to a flood, fire, or your dog's incontinent bladder.
Yeah, there are downsides to eBooks, but there are definite upsides too. The future could include eBook re-releases of books long out of print. With readers (e.g. a Palm or Pocket PC (more expensive)) technology within most people's price point, it really is viable and profitable.
I hope paper books never go away. But I love my eBooks too! Try it, you might just like it.
Jeez, two messages in one day pimping JBuilder. I don't even work for them!
.NET and Java to be competitors, for the most part. They cater to different cultures. Yeah, they do solve a lot of the same problems, but that really isn't relevant in my experience.
Anyway, JBuilder rocks. It rolls. It totally owns. Everything else in the Java world sucks by comparison.
Is that clear enough for you?
Oh, and I wouldn't consider
I can't speak for VC, Netbeans, or Eclipse as I haven't used them extensively, but JBuilder has been the cat's meow for us on the project I'm on now. I've got everything I had in VS.NET and a little more. Having also earned my chops in .NET, I can tell you that the big difference between them (aside from .NET vs. Java) is in ease of setup. It was a bear to get JBuilder 8 SE set up to do server process debugging in Tomcat and Tapestry. VS.NET can be a bear to set up too, but only as the exception, not the rule.
Either environment is a dream to use. I sometimes miss the simplicity of VB6 or Python, but those really aren't options for me anymore.