I have been recently tasked with generating API documentation for new and legacy code.
This is usually what a company asks an important developer to do before they let him/her go. I hope this isn't your situation though. Hopefully they are promoting you to manager and letting you hire/train new employees (using your documented code).
I thought true open source developers are happy just to have the opportunity to write code for free? 10k should be a HUGE incentive; especially for only 15 days of work!!!
Developers have been working on Linux for 15 years and some haven't received a dime.
Google is an advertizing company. For this reason you must consider any "Will Google do X?" question under that light. Can they make money from their advertizers from making an OS? Google is not in the business of selling hardware. That's why I don't see them building a sub $200 PC or anything like that. Besides other companies will handle that (Mac's got one, right). As long as all PCs can surf the web Google has no need to build an OS.
Google's OS is the browser and the Internet. If they can get this WiFi thing spread nationwide they will probably have %50 of the nation's internet going through them. Then they can analyze every packet to the advantage of their advertizing dollars.
Think about it who's gonna buy a $200 pc? Probably the same person that can't affort any decent Internet access. So if google can't put an ad in front of their nose why would they bother?
To make a further prediction, I don't think Google will bother with a browser for a long time either. Why? Because Google is a company that almost 100% of people trust. Has Google ever been hacked? Does their software have bugs? Do they ever get any bad press about anything? The simple fact of the matter is that they leave the messy stuff to other people. No browser making company in the history of the universe has ever made a browser that didn't get some bad press for some security hole. Google isn't perfect either. They just focus on the low hanging fruit. Building a browser is NOT low hanging fruit. So I predict that Google will leave browser and OS products to others.
Google is simply accessorizing the web (Search, Gmail, Maps, GoogleEarth, free Internet, etc.). None of these are innovations. It's all been done before. Google just does it on a large scale and makes it free.
Remember, Google is going after the low hanging fruit that directly plays into their goals as an advertizing company.
Yea, the part about the sorority girls. I was pretty dissapointed. Here's the whole quote,
"The investigators have found, among other things, that men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center."
There. I saved you 5 mins of reading just to be dissapointed that there wasn't really anything about sorority girls and sex, just cursing.
Yea, and then they spend another 2 million on suing the guy for circumventing their $30 million DRM protection scheme.
AND
They'll have to spend this much each year to keep up with the hackers. But at least it's nice to know that Hollywood is fighting for ethics and the little guy. And so I'm sure this useless expenditure will not be passed on to the little guy but will be footed by the pocket change from a couple movie stars and movie studios.
. . . he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.
Innovation usually reduces demand for the obsolete version. The fact is, books are a pain in the tail to search through any way you look at it. It's about time a serious effort is made to make printed material electronically searchable.
Just put the four lettere, "BETA" on the product. Then everybody would just have to shut up because they shouldn't be using beta software for anything important anyways!!!
Now even Symantec has MS moles in their midst. We all know it is not possible for a MS product to be more secure than anything. It even blows my mind that companies bother publishing reviews that indicate as much. They should know that the/. crowd would never fall for biased pro-MS propiganda.
I hope that the telecom companies realize this and make their own free-Internet push. You gotta know that they have their finger on Google's pulse. Either way, somebody's gotta pay for the free service.
With Google's version the advertisers pay. With the telcom's version either the user pays or the government[read gainfully-employed] pays.
Just be happy that you got something for free. You have no right to complain about anything because we put "beta" on it even though it is far beyond beta-grade.
So 5 years from now if your Google WiFi beta connection drops out you must react in the following manner, "Hmmm. . . that's interesting. I can't communicate with my clients anymore. But I guess I can only blame myself for depending on a Google, ahem, uh, a beta product."
But really who cares about that? Sys admins want the browser that is more secure and takes less of their time to administer. They don't care about the age of the product. They just want the best one.
Open Source will always be a better idea than the Microsoft solution!!! Besides, I'm almost sure Microsoft is developing Firefox exploits just to make Firefox look bad. And I could probably argue that the combination of the 11 exploits that Firefox had were less dangerous than the 6 that IE had. So THERE!
IE has been there for a long time people. Get off the tab fetish. If the IE people cared they would already be using one of the many IE tabbed browsers available since way before Firefox.
The funny thing is that Firefox zealots think tabs are innovation?!?!?!?!? Tabs have been around since the beginning of GUI-time.
---
BTW, I use Opera, Firefox and IE for my development testing. I really have no browser-bias. I just think tabs are quite mundane. Talk about browser security or something else worthwhile. Just please get off the tab thing.
We don't even want to know about the details. We forgive them anyway. But deep down inside we know that they are not really at fault or it was just an honest mistake. And I'm almost sure MS has something to do with this.
Thanks for the gutsy and insightful post. I always appreciate the small minority of/.ers who have the guts to inject some raw realism into a blown-out-of-proportion discussion.
Typical. Sounds like the admins don't want to learn a new OS (Linux). Use the right tool for the job. In this case if they want to run software intended to run under Apache they should be using Linux not Windows.
That's kinda the point. Even in the 50's when we had no clue what we were doing blowing off hundreds of megatone class nukes it really didn't affect anybody (unless they happened to be near where the testing was happening).
The actors in the link provided were on a set that was close to these tests. And even then they died of cancer 30 years later.
Not that horrifying, really.
To put this in perspective, if China managed to launch a nuke and it hit in these deserts of Nevada nobody would be be affected. We would all go to work on Monday and be just as healthy as we are now.
Um, the media hype over chernoble and nukes in general is totally blown out of proportion (pardon the pun). People live in Chernoble now. People are still alive that were working at the plant when it blew. USA detonated over a thousand test nukes in the Nevada desert and surrounding areas and we're all fine. Nukes only have a devistating effect when they explode in populated areas. Anytime else, they just spew some radiation that gets completely dissapated and is thereafter harmless.
Seriously, do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who has ever had radiation poisioning even in a minor way?
There may be a few/. readers who have heard/read stories about people getting radiation poisioning. But after all the thousands of test nukes that the nuke-enabled countries have blown in the past decades we're all still here. The fishies are still swimming around and the babies are still just as healthy as they've ever been.
Which would you rather have, 1% of your air polluted with fossil fuel emmissions or over the course of a lifetime inhail maybe 100 radioactive atoms that do you no harm whatsoever?
Do humanity and the earth a favor, become a pr nuclear power activist.
"FEMA Demands. .." Um, how about, "FEMA Streamlines Support And Development Requirements By Supporting The Browser That 90% Of People Use" (and probably 99.9% of people have easy access to).
FEMA is struggling just to get food to these people do you think they want to deal with 4 different browser configs that only make up maybe 10% of market share?
Plus, 70% of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line. I doubt these people even have a computer. That means that they will be using the ones at the libraries at whereever they evacuated to. And **pretty-much** all public-use Library computers are running IE.
So chill out! It is a smart decision for FEMA to cut cost & time by standardizing the site on IE browsers.
Oh, BTW, I don't think any of these people who's houses got destroyed give a flying F*** about the Open Source browser movement right now. So don't even go there (but I'm sure you will).
Yep, IBM. But no slashdotters are pointing that for some strange reason. In any "MS has better TCO" study it doesn't matter who did the study - it is ALWAYS unfair, overly biased, and incorrectly performed.
IBM does a study and the/.ers just elaborate on why they are correct. I'd be a proud/.er if the typical/.er was known for being truely open minded and questioning everything not just pro-MS stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been recently tasked with generating API documentation for new and legacy code.
This is usually what a company asks an important developer to do before they let him/her go. I hope this isn't your situation though. Hopefully they are promoting you to manager and letting you hire/train new employees (using your documented code).
Q: Where do you go to sue somebody for violating a semiconductor law?
A: A Circuit Court!!!
Bad, Bad!!!
I thought true open source developers are happy just to have the opportunity to write code for free? 10k should be a HUGE incentive; especially for only 15 days of work!!!
Developers have been working on Linux for 15 years and some haven't received a dime.
Google is an advertizing company. For this reason you must consider any "Will Google do X?" question under that light. Can they make money from their advertizers from making an OS? Google is not in the business of selling hardware. That's why I don't see them building a sub $200 PC or anything like that. Besides other companies will handle that (Mac's got one, right). As long as all PCs can surf the web Google has no need to build an OS.
Google's OS is the browser and the Internet. If they can get this WiFi thing spread nationwide they will probably have %50 of the nation's internet going through them. Then they can analyze every packet to the advantage of their advertizing dollars.
Think about it who's gonna buy a $200 pc? Probably the same person that can't affort any decent Internet access. So if google can't put an ad in front of their nose why would they bother?
To make a further prediction, I don't think Google will bother with a browser for a long time either. Why? Because Google is a company that almost 100% of people trust. Has Google ever been hacked? Does their software have bugs? Do they ever get any bad press about anything? The simple fact of the matter is that they leave the messy stuff to other people. No browser making company in the history of the universe has ever made a browser that didn't get some bad press for some security hole. Google isn't perfect either. They just focus on the low hanging fruit. Building a browser is NOT low hanging fruit. So I predict that Google will leave browser and OS products to others.
Google is simply accessorizing the web (Search, Gmail, Maps, GoogleEarth, free Internet, etc.). None of these are innovations. It's all been done before. Google just does it on a large scale and makes it free.
Remember, Google is going after the low hanging fruit that directly plays into their goals as an advertizing company.
Yea, the part about the sorority girls. I was pretty dissapointed. Here's the whole quote,
"The investigators have found, among other things, that men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center."
There. I saved you 5 mins of reading just to be dissapointed that there wasn't really anything about sorority girls and sex, just cursing.
This move must be an emergency restructuring to stop what many MSers are realizing is another inevitable slippage in Vista.
Yea, and then they spend another 2 million on suing the guy for circumventing their $30 million DRM protection scheme.
AND
They'll have to spend this much each year to keep up with the hackers. But at least it's nice to know that Hollywood is fighting for ethics and the little guy. And so I'm sure this useless expenditure will not be passed on to the little guy but will be footed by the pocket change from a couple movie stars and movie studios.
. . . he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.
Innovation usually reduces demand for the obsolete version. The fact is, books are a pain in the tail to search through any way you look at it. It's about time a serious effort is made to make printed material electronically searchable.
Just put the four lettere, "BETA" on the product. Then everybody would just have to shut up because they shouldn't be using beta software for anything important anyways!!!
Now even Symantec has MS moles in their midst. We all know it is not possible for a MS product to be more secure than anything. It even blows my mind that companies bother publishing reviews that indicate as much. They should know that the /. crowd would never fall for biased pro-MS propiganda.
I hope that the telecom companies realize this and make their own free-Internet push. You gotta know that they have their finger on Google's pulse. Either way, somebody's gotta pay for the free service.
With Google's version the advertisers pay. With the telcom's version either the user pays or the government[read gainfully-employed] pays.
Never gonna happen. Google's OS is the web browser. I could definately see Google making their own browser though.
Just be happy that you got something for free. You have no right to complain about anything because we put "beta" on it even though it is far beyond beta-grade.
So 5 years from now if your Google WiFi beta connection drops out you must react in the following manner, "Hmmm. . . that's interesting. I can't communicate with my clients anymore. But I guess I can only blame myself for depending on a Google, ahem, uh, a beta product."
But really who cares about that? Sys admins want the browser that is more secure and takes less of their time to administer. They don't care about the age of the product. They just want the best one.
Open Source will always be a better idea than the Microsoft solution!!! Besides, I'm almost sure Microsoft is developing Firefox exploits just to make Firefox look bad. And I could probably argue that the combination of the 11 exploits that Firefox had were less dangerous than the 6 that IE had. So THERE!
Am I the only one that wonders why everybody thinks Tabs make the Firefox UI the seeming pinacle of modern GUI design and innovation?
.and MANY more
Is there anybody else who doesn't give a rip about tabs. I really don't give a flying crap about them.
In fact there are several IE based browsers that have had the tab capability for a long time.
http://www.avantbrowser.com/
http://www.mybrowser.web4net.net/en/
http://www.maxthon.com/
. .
IE has been there for a long time people. Get off the tab fetish. If the IE people cared they would already be using one of the many IE tabbed browsers available since way before Firefox.
The funny thing is that Firefox zealots think tabs are innovation?!?!?!?!? Tabs have been around since the beginning of GUI-time.
--- BTW, I use Opera, Firefox and IE for my development testing. I really have no browser-bias. I just think tabs are quite mundane. Talk about browser security or something else worthwhile. Just please get off the tab thing.
We don't even want to know about the details. We forgive them anyway. But deep down inside we know that they are not really at fault or it was just an honest mistake. And I'm almost sure MS has something to do with this.
Thanks for the gutsy and insightful post. I always appreciate the small minority of /.ers who have the guts to inject some raw realism into a blown-out-of-proportion discussion.
Typical. Sounds like the admins don't want to learn a new OS (Linux). Use the right tool for the job. In this case if they want to run software intended to run under Apache they should be using Linux not Windows.
That's kinda the point. Even in the 50's when we had no clue what we were doing blowing off hundreds of megatone class nukes it really didn't affect anybody (unless they happened to be near where the testing was happening).
The actors in the link provided were on a set that was close to these tests. And even then they died of cancer 30 years later.
Not that horrifying, really.
To put this in perspective, if China managed to launch a nuke and it hit in these deserts of Nevada nobody would be be affected. We would all go to work on Monday and be just as healthy as we are now.
Um, the media hype over chernoble and nukes in general is totally blown out of proportion (pardon the pun). People live in Chernoble now. People are still alive that were working at the plant when it blew. USA detonated over a thousand test nukes in the Nevada desert and surrounding areas and we're all fine. Nukes only have a devistating effect when they explode in populated areas. Anytime else, they just spew some radiation that gets completely dissapated and is thereafter harmless.
/. readers who have heard/read stories about people getting radiation poisioning. But after all the thousands of test nukes that the nuke-enabled countries have blown in the past decades we're all still here. The fishies are still swimming around and the babies are still just as healthy as they've ever been.
Seriously, do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who has ever had radiation poisioning even in a minor way?
There may be a few
Which would you rather have, 1% of your air polluted with fossil fuel emmissions or over the course of a lifetime inhail maybe 100 radioactive atoms that do you no harm whatsoever?
Do humanity and the earth a favor, become a pr nuclear power activist.
Tell me about it (dupe)!
I mean, it even said "Das Keyboard" in the title!
I wonder if stereotypical slashdotters would classify themselves more as 1) open minded or 2) anti-establishment?
What would you say?
"FEMA Demands. . ."
Um, how about, "FEMA Streamlines Support And Development Requirements By Supporting The Browser That 90% Of People Use" (and probably 99.9% of people have easy access to).
FEMA is struggling just to get food to these people do you think they want to deal with 4 different browser configs that only make up maybe 10% of market share?
Plus, 70% of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line. I doubt these people even have a computer. That means that they will be using the ones at the libraries at whereever they evacuated to. And **pretty-much** all public-use Library computers are running IE.
So chill out! It is a smart decision for FEMA to cut cost & time by standardizing the site on IE browsers.
Oh, BTW, I don't think any of these people who's houses got destroyed give a flying F*** about the Open Source browser movement right now. So don't even go there (but I'm sure you will).
--
This post is DOA.
Yep, IBM. But no slashdotters are pointing that for some strange reason. In any "MS has better TCO" study it doesn't matter who did the study - it is ALWAYS unfair, overly biased, and incorrectly performed.
/.ers just elaborate on why they are correct. I'd be a proud /.er if the typical /.er was known for being truely open minded and questioning everything not just pro-MS stuff.
IBM does a study and the