Your network and system administrators need to be under your control. It's that simple. You need to be able to fire them and to prosecute them as individuals in the event of wrongdoing.
Oursourcing reduces your control over the people doing the work. In the cases of network and system administration, it gives you far too little control over the individual people who are acting.
Bite the bullet and accept the fact that it's worth paying to keep these vital services in house and under full local control.
IT workers are able to do things that most people cannot do. IT workers know this.
IT workers are needed everywhere. IT workers know this.
Managers have managed to keep IT salaries low due to downward pressure on wages from immigrants and offshoring, but these pressures are temporary. As developing countries develop their own IT infrastructures, the worldwide demand will continue to outgrow the worldwide supply, and this will eventually be felt at the local level.
When a worker manages a system which costs an employer oodles of dollars per day of downtime, but is paid peanuts, the worker knows that the worker is giving more value to the employer than the worker is being paid for.
It is time for an upward market adjustment. The IT workers know this. The employers are trying to avoid it, but in time the difficulty hiring and retaining good IT workers will force management to acknowledge it.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe someone will come up with a great technology that allows managers to get the benefits of technology without the headaches of IT workers. However, if history is any indicator, most inventions that hold that sort of promise at the beginning (SQL, the GUI, the personal computer, automatic program generators (remember The Last One?), the web, and so on) usually end up creating a requirement for more IT workers than before.
1. It was a mistake or oversight, and will be rectified
I hope that is the case, but I doubt it. I have trouble imagining how someone could accidentally delete the copyright/license notice.
2. Killing the eee over this would do greater damage to the cause of free software (and linux) than ignoring a minor transgression
That depends. If the community accepts GPL violations, they will continue and become more egregious. That seems like a very serious threat to the essence of Free Software.
And to me, a GPL violation in the kernel seems worse than one at the application level, because the freedom of the whole system relies on the freedom of the kernel. If they violated the GPL at the application level, we could always just toss what they deliver and install another distribution, but by doing it at the kernel level, they have created a vendor lock in situation. Use their OS, or the hardware is not fully functional.
Yes, it may be possible to make their binary driver work with some other kernel or distribution, but there is no guarantee, especially long term. The only way that I can know my hardware will still be fully functional with whatever version of Linux is out in 5 years is if we have the full source code for all of the drivers.
Yes, because it's quite clear that what ASUS did is truely evil and without any possible excuse.
Your general tone seems to be sarcastic, which seems to imply that you believe there are possible excuses. Assuming that I understand you correctly (and I may not), what do you consider to be acceptable excuses for violating the GPL and removing copyright/license notices?
I remember hearing someone once say that if you think the earth is round because the soles of your feet are arched, and God would not give you arched feet to walk upon a flat earth, then you don't really know that the earth is round. I suspect that most people just don't know enough and/or aren't good enough at thinking to really evaluate the evidence, and that most people who accept evolution do not understand it based on an evaluation of the facts, but believe it because their parents or teachers told them that it was true.
The evidence spans multiple disciplines, evaluating it requires critical thinking skills, and I just don't think that it is possible to present the evidence in a compelling manner in 30 seconds. I think it requires hours to do so, and an audience that is willing and able to think about the evidence presented.
OSS simply means that source code is included with the license. [...] But you can still have your client sign an NDA, use a license that prevents redistribution, etc.
While there can be differences of opinion over whether it was right for Google to make the request, they sure made it with a lot more tact than many companies have in the past. No threats. No blustering. No legal speak. It was a very reasonable letter that respects the recipient's intelligence and moral integrity.
DRM. If I buy it, I want to be able to read it wherever I want to, on whatever device I like, at any point in the future, even if the device I was using when I bought it has broken and the company that sold it to me is out of business.
Price. If an ebook costs the same as a printed book, I might as well get the printed one. It works anywhere. No need to worry about electricity. If two products cost the same, I'll take the better one. The ebook should cost much less than the printed book, both because of what the publisher saves in printing and shipping costs, and what I give up in convenience.
That said, I have purchased some ebooks. They are non-DRM'd PDFs and plain text files.
As I recall, 4k basic for the Altair was written on an Altair emulator running on a PDP-10 running TOPS-10 at Harvard, which the students were not authorized to use for commercial purposes.
Since when are completely unsubstantiated claims that it might be possible someday to violate fundamental physical laws news?
Because we've spent decades watching Star Trek. We want phasers and transporters and tractor beams, but more than all of that, we want to believe that some day, even if it's after we're all dead, humans will break the light barrier. Anything that gives us a glimmer of hope is exciting and unless and until somebody does make a warp drive work, we will continue to be excited every time there is a whisper of an idea about how to do it.
This laptop is going to come preloaded with Logo and Squeak, two of the most open ended, powerful, creativity inspiring development environments ever built.
The people using them are not steeped in western computer culture. They won't find Smalltalk or Logo syntax "weird".
The people using them are not tied to lots of other high tech ways to communicate. When they are taught how to use the computer as "personal dynamic media", that is, as a way to communicate with each other by sending each other simulations of their ideas, they will find it useful. They will learn how to do it.
The people who will be teaching with these won't have a "back to basics" crowd preventing them from using constructivist methods. Their students may end up being able to think better than our students.
In short, the fact that we got computers and education first addicted us to a less developed way of using computers and teaching. The late comers will be able to embrace the more effective ways of using computers and educating, and will probably pass us up.
Personally, I think this is bad news. We had Logo and Smalltalk over 20 years ago, with the chance to have a revolution right here in America (in many ways, one started with Logo in classrooms, but then it sort of died). Because of our lack of foresight, those who were behind us are now going to get the chance to pass us up.
I would still buy one though. It looks really cool!
From your first link: "It runs their custom software under QNX and only using their own dialup service"
There is a world of difference between something that comes open, and something that hardware hackers are able to make open. The OLPC machines will come already able to run huge amounts of Linux software. They'll come with one of the greatest development environments ever created (Squeak). They'll be portable and not need electricity and be easy to hack, by design.
I don't see much similarity between OLPC and the I-Opener.
What "similar schemes" could he be talking about? I have never seen anything before that combines this level of cheapness, functionality, and openness.
Wow, kind sir, you've given me this nice house, your car, use of your lovely wife on a regular basis and your daughter's hand in marriage - all without strings attached! Why oh why won't you also give me your country estate?
Not exactly. It's more like:
Wow, kind sir, you've told me how this nice house, your car, your lovely wife and daughter work - all without strings attached! Why oh why won't you answer the ONE QUESTION I KEEP ASKING ABOUT HOW YOUR LAWNMOWER WORKS?!?
What is going on with Sun? Why do they keep opening up things all over the board but ignoring the one thing that they have received the most demand to open up?
I don't think people in this topic are being anti-tech at all. I think they're being anti-tech-that-tries-to-do-things-that-parents-sho uld-do and anti-tech-that-only-works-with-other-tech-from-the -same-company.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't recall ever seeing a real false positive.
How would you know? It would look just like a real positive. The student would claim innocence, and you would believe they were lying.
Your network and system administrators need to be under your control. It's that simple. You need to be able to fire them and to prosecute them as individuals in the event of wrongdoing. Oursourcing reduces your control over the people doing the work. In the cases of network and system administration, it gives you far too little control over the individual people who are acting. Bite the bullet and accept the fact that it's worth paying to keep these vital services in house and under full local control.
...with a broken glass bottle.. and then sit in a pool of Tabasco sauce.
Many of the Open Source tools are also commercial, and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. Proprietary tools are dying.
IT workers are needed everywhere. IT workers know this.
Managers have managed to keep IT salaries low due to downward pressure on wages from immigrants and offshoring, but these pressures are temporary. As developing countries develop their own IT infrastructures, the worldwide demand will continue to outgrow the worldwide supply, and this will eventually be felt at the local level.
When a worker manages a system which costs an employer oodles of dollars per day of downtime, but is paid peanuts, the worker knows that the worker is giving more value to the employer than the worker is being paid for.
It is time for an upward market adjustment. The IT workers know this. The employers are trying to avoid it, but in time the difficulty hiring and retaining good IT workers will force management to acknowledge it.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe someone will come up with a great technology that allows managers to get the benefits of technology without the headaches of IT workers. However, if history is any indicator, most inventions that hold that sort of promise at the beginning (SQL, the GUI, the personal computer, automatic program generators (remember The Last One?), the web, and so on) usually end up creating a requirement for more IT workers than before.
That depends. If the community accepts GPL violations, they will continue and become more egregious. That seems like a very serious threat to the essence of Free Software.
And to me, a GPL violation in the kernel seems worse than one at the application level, because the freedom of the whole system relies on the freedom of the kernel. If they violated the GPL at the application level, we could always just toss what they deliver and install another distribution, but by doing it at the kernel level, they have created a vendor lock in situation. Use their OS, or the hardware is not fully functional.
Yes, it may be possible to make their binary driver work with some other kernel or distribution, but there is no guarantee, especially long term. The only way that I can know my hardware will still be fully functional with whatever version of Linux is out in 5 years is if we have the full source code for all of the drivers.
I had been looking at an eeePC, and I'm goad that I heard about this before plunking down any money. I am no longer considering any ASUS products.
...back when the laptop was going to be $100.
Now... now so much.
I remember hearing someone once say that if you think the earth is round because the soles of your feet are arched, and God would not give you arched feet to walk upon a flat earth, then you don't really know that the earth is round. I suspect that most people just don't know enough and/or aren't good enough at thinking to really evaluate the evidence, and that most people who accept evolution do not understand it based on an evaluation of the facts, but believe it because their parents or teachers told them that it was true.
The evidence spans multiple disciplines, evaluating it requires critical thinking skills, and I just don't think that it is possible to present the evidence in a compelling manner in 30 seconds. I think it requires hours to do so, and an audience that is willing and able to think about the evidence presented.
Of course, I would love to be proven wrong.
Am I the only one reminded of Acoustic Delay Line Memory by this?
This is not true. See The OpenSource Definition.
Why hasn't Hans started a defense fund and accepted donations?
It worked for Zimmermann.
While there can be differences of opinion over whether it was right for Google to make the request, they sure made it with a lot more tact than many companies have in the past. No threats. No blustering. No legal speak. It was a very reasonable letter that respects the recipient's intelligence and moral integrity.
I'm impressed.
DRM. If I buy it, I want to be able to read it wherever I want to, on whatever device I like, at any point in the future, even if the device I was using when I bought it has broken and the company that sold it to me is out of business.
Price. If an ebook costs the same as a printed book, I might as well get the printed one. It works anywhere. No need to worry about electricity. If two products cost the same, I'll take the better one. The ebook should cost much less than the printed book, both because of what the publisher saves in printing and shipping costs, and what I give up in convenience.
That said, I have purchased some ebooks. They are non-DRM'd PDFs and plain text files.
As I recall, 4k basic for the Altair was written on an Altair emulator running on a PDP-10 running TOPS-10 at Harvard, which the students were not authorized to use for commercial purposes.
Because we've spent decades watching Star Trek. We want phasers and transporters and tractor beams, but more than all of that, we want to believe that some day, even if it's after we're all dead, humans will break the light barrier. Anything that gives us a glimmer of hope is exciting and unless and until somebody does make a warp drive work, we will continue to be excited every time there is a whisper of an idea about how to do it.
I wonder what's going on there!
The people using them are not steeped in western computer culture. They won't find Smalltalk or Logo syntax "weird".
The people using them are not tied to lots of other high tech ways to communicate. When they are taught how to use the computer as "personal dynamic media", that is, as a way to communicate with each other by sending each other simulations of their ideas, they will find it useful. They will learn how to do it.
The people who will be teaching with these won't have a "back to basics" crowd preventing them from using constructivist methods. Their students may end up being able to think better than our students.
In short, the fact that we got computers and education first addicted us to a less developed way of using computers and teaching. The late comers will be able to embrace the more effective ways of using computers and educating, and will probably pass us up.
Personally, I think this is bad news. We had Logo and Smalltalk over 20 years ago, with the chance to have a revolution right here in America (in many ways, one started with Logo in classrooms, but then it sort of died). Because of our lack of foresight, those who were behind us are now going to get the chance to pass us up.
I would still buy one though. It looks really cool!
There is a world of difference between something that comes open, and something that hardware hackers are able to make open. The OLPC machines will come already able to run huge amounts of Linux software. They'll come with one of the greatest development environments ever created (Squeak). They'll be portable and not need electricity and be easy to hack, by design.
I don't see much similarity between OLPC and the I-Opener.
What "similar schemes" could he be talking about? I have never seen anything before that combines this level of cheapness, functionality, and openness.
Not exactly. It's more like:
Wow, kind sir, you've told me how this nice house, your car, your lovely wife and daughter work - all without strings attached! Why oh why won't you answer the ONE QUESTION I KEEP ASKING ABOUT HOW YOUR LAWNMOWER WORKS?!?
What is going on with Sun? Why do they keep opening up things all over the board but ignoring the one thing that they have received the most demand to open up?
I don't think people in this topic are being anti-tech at all. I think they're being anti-tech-that-tries-to-do-things-that-parents-sho uld-do and anti-tech-that-only-works-with-other-tech-from-the -same-company.
I wonder if the Common Business Communication Language counts as prior art: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/cbcl.html