What constitutes "official" content? If a congressperson writes a personal thought or opinion in a public setting, is it only "official" if others deem it so? If a member of Congress says something, what does it matter if he says it in a public forum, or on the golf course, or in a pickup game of basketball, or in a bar? Why should anyone, be they elected officials or Joes on the street, need approval by anyone of their thoughts or opinions, no matter where they are made?
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am going through this exact thing - our small company was recently acquired by a much larger company (and our previous #1 competitor to boot!), and I am seeing myself in both the original question and all of the comments. The fear of the unknown, the apprehension, the prospects of putting my resume back out there....they're all there.
I, too, felt disillusioned in the system, frustrated with the powers-that-be, and distrustful of the whole thing. My initial thoughts were that this whole mess wasn't going to be for the better at all, and that we were getting sucked in to their crappiness. I've decided to keep my eyes open a little more for whatever opportunities are out there, at least moreso than I was before. But I'm going to wait awhile longer to see how things pan out. Corporate communication throughout the whole thing has been little to non-existent, though. The biggest struggle I've had is that my job role has changed. Well, no one has actually told me it has changed, but my previous role was lead developer in our small company - and the new company outsources all of their dev work to India (which is VERY subpar quality work I might add). I get the feeling they've got all these new people now, and don't really know what to do with them. I'd really rather be doing software development and programming that "managing" or doing this "project leader" BS.
I've either learned that things will begin to smooth out, or that I should just stop caring about putting out a better "product" and giving everything my best effort. If upper management only cares about the bottom line, no matter how crappy the quality of our company's product and service, why should I bother?
My wife and I have always joked that they should just strip everyone down, and anesthetize them. If your "cargo" is naked and unconscious, they can't hijack the plane!
Why bother spending all this money on building infrastructure when you can just use download caps and tiered pricing to keep usage down? Problem solved!
I had a professor who also required us to buy a book that he had written. But, at the end of the semester he encouraged to NOT sell the books back, saying he didn't get royalty payments on used book sales. Screw that, of course I got what I could for it. Bah, I hated buying textbooks.
I tried the profiles thing a long time ago, but didn't like it because you couldn't move a movie from one queue to another. I wanted to separate out my movies from my wife's, but they were already queued up. As far as I could tell, the only way to split them out was to delete from one, and add to the other. As far as I was concerned, eliminating this "feature" didn't affect me at all.
If this still isn't the case, perhaps I'll try it again...
Interesting...maybe I'll that tonight - I'm pretty sure I am a few versions back or something. Everything had always just worked with Windows, it's annoying that it just doesn't work with linux.....
I'm running off the CD with a floppy disk for my config - is there anything to upgrading other than burning a new CD and booting with that? I'll check out the FreeNAS page, too...thanks!
I've run into a problem with FreeNAS: I've had it working successfully for almost a year, and have a share on it with my music collection. The music share has ~1000+ folders in, and a ton of files. It's worked fine to access from many Window PCs, accessing via SAMBA. I recently converted my home laptop to Ubuntu 8.04, and now can no longer view my music shares. The NAS works, and the sharing works, but when I go to the music folder on FreeNAS, it shows 0 items. I dunno what's wrong with it, and haven't had time to fully look into it. It's very annoying, though, and I'm thinking of just wiping it clean and setting up an Ubuntu for file sharing and some local web development stuff. Just my $.02.
I dunno....it's been on two different development workstations. I wouldn't call them underpowered at all. IE7's interface feels much slower than Firefox's.
Ugh, I've used IE7 since it was out in beta, but Firefox is my primary browser. IE7 is sooooooooo much slower to respond than Firefox, even back on v2. V3 is not even worth competition. I can start Firefox, ctrl-T to open a new tab, ctrl-L to go to a location, and have that location loaded before IE7 has barely rendered the default start page. I don't know why it is, but opening new tabs in IE7 is painfully slow, as is switching back and forth between them. Firefox is soooo much easier to use.
The question you should be asking: "why would an OSS developer donate his time to make his and everybody else's life harder?". Sociopathic spite? I dunno....now I could see doing it just to piss people off....:-)
Has there ever been a breakdown of the profit margin on the Aeron, relative to the cost of the parts and labor? I'm genuinely curious....they seem to be very highly recommended by almost everyone, and the only real criticism seems to be the cost. Could they be priced to fly off the shelves at $500, or are they purposely priced higher to achieve that "prestige" quality, a la Apple?
At work I've been using Thunderbird/Lightning with IMAP for the past couple years. Before that I used Outlook at a previous job, and now we've just been merged and moved *back* Exchange and Outlook 2007. There are aspects I love about both, and aspects I hate about both.
For email, I find Thunderbird wins with no contest. I hate everything about Outlook's email handling. The billion different places that options and settings are stored, stationery, the fonts, the crappy way links are handled if you change to plain text only....gah! But the shared contacts, calendaring, and syncing are excellent. Lightning was OK, but I could never get it to work well as a task-oriented work process as I could with Outlook. However, Lightning's handling of multiple calendars (Google calendar connector specifically) I feel is much better.
Depending on how things pan out, how does it fare for Tbird if the Exchange APIs are actually released and work? Outlook's muscle comes from the tight integration to Exchange. If I could use Thunderbird/Lightning but get all of the groupware benefits of Exchange, hopefully with improved Task handling...then I think they'd really be on to something!
Reading the CW article it sounded like they just needed/wanted some sort of CMS to help organize things nationally. For that, there's TONS of OSS CMS systems out there.
But on the scouting.org page itself, "Open Source Software" is thrown around as a buzzword so much my head hurt. It sounds like they want to create a Scout-centric Sourceforge type of place? Why not just compile a list of applications that mostly meed their needs, then augment them as they see need (while contributing back to the community of course)? Or are they looking for the manpower to do it in the first place?
What's the ground clearance on those 70s station wagons? Are they gonna handle a northern Michigan trail with thick roots everywhere, or muddy fields? Are they 4x4 for those Michigan winters, or when towing a loaded trailer?
You, sir, are an idiot.
I always figured I'd give bicycles the same consideration on the road once they weigh 2000 pounds and can go 60mph. The law may be there, but it lacks common sense.
Ummmm, didn't the press release say that now all Alltel customers would now be part of Verizon's IN network? I.e., now all customers on both Verizon and Alltel can call each other without using minutes or anything.
With random Windows apps I'd have to keep checking their websites or news sites myself to keep track of these issues, or any other security issues with the app. And then manually download it.
The current method adopted by many Windows apps of each having their own 'update manager' process running in the tray is not a sustainable in any way.
As a recent full time linux convert, I'm still not sure I'm adjusted to this, nor like it. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 at home now, but still use Windows at home. It's become normal to expect whatever utilities to come with their own updaters, and I don't see why this should be a problem. In fact, I kind of prefer it. It doesn't have to run in the tray, but if it checks on the application startup, then great.
It annoys me to have to wait X amount of time for someone else to decide that I can update the software on my machine. This is fine for whatever updates for things I don't necessarily use a lot but are on my machine. But for things I use every day (Firefox, Filezilla, Pidgin off the top of my head), I don't like having to wait. Why am I still on Firefox 3b5 when I've been on RC1 on Windows for a few weeks now? Why is the Filezilla in the packages 2-3 versions behind the latest? On Windows when I'd run a program, it would check if there's updates, let me know, and I could go get them.
It's nice to have the management all in one place, but it breaks if it isn't kept current.
What exactly does he *do*? I'd like more details on what day to day tasks that he was doing with MS software specifically are replaced by open source solutions. Email? Web browsing? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Presentations? Sure, those all work.
I've recently moved full time to Ubuntu at home, but my needs there are light. I don't have time for PC gaming anymore, so I found myself mostly just browsing the web and using email (which is also via the web). I want to get into some more PHP/MySQL development, so I figured that environment would doubly work at that. And aside from some normal quirks in getting everything set up, it's been fine. The package update/management system is taking getting used to, as I'm finding I don't like being at the whims of others on when I can update my software, but I'm working on it.
But converting fully at work would be a different story. We're a software service provider, but it's built on Microsoft technology and tools (classic ASP, IIS, SQL Server, VB6 and.NET). I use OSS tools mostly where I can (Firefox, Notepad++ for text editing, OpenOffice), but I don't know how I'd necessarily do what I need to do without SQL Server Management Studio and the Visual Studio IDE (prefer 2008, but I still have to use VS6 at times). I'm sure I could probably find some OSS tools at least for the database management, although I don't know if they'd work as well. The IDE...I could probably even find some alternatives to them, but I doubt they'd work as well, either. A VM might work, but then what would I gain?
I guess my point is, sure, I think Linux can work in some corporate environments, where workers are basically [electronic] paper pushers, or who work [browse] on the Internet all day. But I think a lot of the replacement value comes with the availability of cross platform tools for what you do, independent of the OS platform at all.
Slashdot Mirror
What constitutes "official" content? If a congressperson writes a personal thought or opinion in a public setting, is it only "official" if others deem it so? If a member of Congress says something, what does it matter if he says it in a public forum, or on the golf course, or in a pickup game of basketball, or in a bar? Why should anyone, be they elected officials or Joes on the street, need approval by anyone of their thoughts or opinions, no matter where they are made?
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am going through this exact thing - our small company was recently acquired by a much larger company (and our previous #1 competitor to boot!), and I am seeing myself in both the original question and all of the comments. The fear of the unknown, the apprehension, the prospects of putting my resume back out there....they're all there.
I, too, felt disillusioned in the system, frustrated with the powers-that-be, and distrustful of the whole thing. My initial thoughts were that this whole mess wasn't going to be for the better at all, and that we were getting sucked in to their crappiness. I've decided to keep my eyes open a little more for whatever opportunities are out there, at least moreso than I was before. But I'm going to wait awhile longer to see how things pan out. Corporate communication throughout the whole thing has been little to non-existent, though. The biggest struggle I've had is that my job role has changed. Well, no one has actually told me it has changed, but my previous role was lead developer in our small company - and the new company outsources all of their dev work to India (which is VERY subpar quality work I might add). I get the feeling they've got all these new people now, and don't really know what to do with them. I'd really rather be doing software development and programming that "managing" or doing this "project leader" BS.
I've either learned that things will begin to smooth out, or that I should just stop caring about putting out a better "product" and giving everything my best effort. If upper management only cares about the bottom line, no matter how crappy the quality of our company's product and service, why should I bother?
My wife and I have always joked that they should just strip everyone down, and anesthetize them. If your "cargo" is naked and unconscious, they can't hijack the plane!
Why bother spending all this money on building infrastructure when you can just use download caps and tiered pricing to keep usage down? Problem solved!
Fuck, do I have to change my real-life name to "edmicman"?
I for one welcome--er, wait....what were we talking about again?
On a related note, is there *anything* out there on setting up custom colors on VS6?
I'm stuck working in VB6 lately for some projects and it's bad enough...ugh!
Is this available in Visual Studio 6?
You're right - I hate all those online publications and sites that force me to visit them. Damn kids!
I had a professor who also required us to buy a book that he had written. But, at the end of the semester he encouraged to NOT sell the books back, saying he didn't get royalty payments on used book sales. Screw that, of course I got what I could for it. Bah, I hated buying textbooks.
I tried the profiles thing a long time ago, but didn't like it because you couldn't move a movie from one queue to another. I wanted to separate out my movies from my wife's, but they were already queued up. As far as I could tell, the only way to split them out was to delete from one, and add to the other. As far as I was concerned, eliminating this "feature" didn't affect me at all.
If this still isn't the case, perhaps I'll try it again...
Interesting...maybe I'll that tonight - I'm pretty sure I am a few versions back or something. Everything had always just worked with Windows, it's annoying that it just doesn't work with linux.....
I'm running off the CD with a floppy disk for my config - is there anything to upgrading other than burning a new CD and booting with that? I'll check out the FreeNAS page, too...thanks!
I've run into a problem with FreeNAS: I've had it working successfully for almost a year, and have a share on it with my music collection. The music share has ~1000+ folders in, and a ton of files. It's worked fine to access from many Window PCs, accessing via SAMBA. I recently converted my home laptop to Ubuntu 8.04, and now can no longer view my music shares. The NAS works, and the sharing works, but when I go to the music folder on FreeNAS, it shows 0 items. I dunno what's wrong with it, and haven't had time to fully look into it. It's very annoying, though, and I'm thinking of just wiping it clean and setting up an Ubuntu for file sharing and some local web development stuff. Just my $.02.
I dunno....it's been on two different development workstations. I wouldn't call them underpowered at all. IE7's interface feels much slower than Firefox's.
Ugh, I've used IE7 since it was out in beta, but Firefox is my primary browser. IE7 is sooooooooo much slower to respond than Firefox, even back on v2. V3 is not even worth competition. I can start Firefox, ctrl-T to open a new tab, ctrl-L to go to a location, and have that location loaded before IE7 has barely rendered the default start page. I don't know why it is, but opening new tabs in IE7 is painfully slow, as is switching back and forth between them. Firefox is soooo much easier to use.
Has there ever been a breakdown of the profit margin on the Aeron, relative to the cost of the parts and labor? I'm genuinely curious....they seem to be very highly recommended by almost everyone, and the only real criticism seems to be the cost. Could they be priced to fly off the shelves at $500, or are they purposely priced higher to achieve that "prestige" quality, a la Apple?
Did anyone else see that and then go to backslashdot.org, too?
At work I've been using Thunderbird/Lightning with IMAP for the past couple years. Before that I used Outlook at a previous job, and now we've just been merged and moved *back* Exchange and Outlook 2007. There are aspects I love about both, and aspects I hate about both.
For email, I find Thunderbird wins with no contest. I hate everything about Outlook's email handling. The billion different places that options and settings are stored, stationery, the fonts, the crappy way links are handled if you change to plain text only....gah! But the shared contacts, calendaring, and syncing are excellent. Lightning was OK, but I could never get it to work well as a task-oriented work process as I could with Outlook. However, Lightning's handling of multiple calendars (Google calendar connector specifically) I feel is much better.
Depending on how things pan out, how does it fare for Tbird if the Exchange APIs are actually released and work? Outlook's muscle comes from the tight integration to Exchange. If I could use Thunderbird/Lightning but get all of the groupware benefits of Exchange, hopefully with improved Task handling...then I think they'd really be on to something!
Reading the CW article it sounded like they just needed/wanted some sort of CMS to help organize things nationally. For that, there's TONS of OSS CMS systems out there.
But on the scouting.org page itself, "Open Source Software" is thrown around as a buzzword so much my head hurt. It sounds like they want to create a Scout-centric Sourceforge type of place? Why not just compile a list of applications that mostly meed their needs, then augment them as they see need (while contributing back to the community of course)? Or are they looking for the manpower to do it in the first place?
What's the ground clearance on those 70s station wagons? Are they gonna handle a northern Michigan trail with thick roots everywhere, or muddy fields? Are they 4x4 for those Michigan winters, or when towing a loaded trailer? You, sir, are an idiot.
I always figured I'd give bicycles the same consideration on the road once they weigh 2000 pounds and can go 60mph. The law may be there, but it lacks common sense.
Ummmm, didn't the press release say that now all Alltel customers would now be part of Verizon's IN network? I.e., now all customers on both Verizon and Alltel can call each other without using minutes or anything.
The current method adopted by many Windows apps of each having their own 'update manager' process running in the tray is not a sustainable in any way.
As a recent full time linux convert, I'm still not sure I'm adjusted to this, nor like it. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 at home now, but still use Windows at home. It's become normal to expect whatever utilities to come with their own updaters, and I don't see why this should be a problem. In fact, I kind of prefer it. It doesn't have to run in the tray, but if it checks on the application startup, then great.
It annoys me to have to wait X amount of time for someone else to decide that I can update the software on my machine. This is fine for whatever updates for things I don't necessarily use a lot but are on my machine. But for things I use every day (Firefox, Filezilla, Pidgin off the top of my head), I don't like having to wait. Why am I still on Firefox 3b5 when I've been on RC1 on Windows for a few weeks now? Why is the Filezilla in the packages 2-3 versions behind the latest? On Windows when I'd run a program, it would check if there's updates, let me know, and I could go get them.
It's nice to have the management all in one place, but it breaks if it isn't kept current.
What exactly does he *do*? I'd like more details on what day to day tasks that he was doing with MS software specifically are replaced by open source solutions. Email? Web browsing? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Presentations? Sure, those all work.
I've recently moved full time to Ubuntu at home, but my needs there are light. I don't have time for PC gaming anymore, so I found myself mostly just browsing the web and using email (which is also via the web). I want to get into some more PHP/MySQL development, so I figured that environment would doubly work at that. And aside from some normal quirks in getting everything set up, it's been fine. The package update/management system is taking getting used to, as I'm finding I don't like being at the whims of others on when I can update my software, but I'm working on it.
But converting fully at work would be a different story. We're a software service provider, but it's built on Microsoft technology and tools (classic ASP, IIS, SQL Server, VB6 and .NET). I use OSS tools mostly where I can (Firefox, Notepad++ for text editing, OpenOffice), but I don't know how I'd necessarily do what I need to do without SQL Server Management Studio and the Visual Studio IDE (prefer 2008, but I still have to use VS6 at times). I'm sure I could probably find some OSS tools at least for the database management, although I don't know if they'd work as well. The IDE...I could probably even find some alternatives to them, but I doubt they'd work as well, either. A VM might work, but then what would I gain?
I guess my point is, sure, I think Linux can work in some corporate environments, where workers are basically [electronic] paper pushers, or who work [browse] on the Internet all day. But I think a lot of the replacement value comes with the availability of cross platform tools for what you do, independent of the OS platform at all.