copyright has it's problems, i agree, but there's one more which is missing.. try to get a copyright on something.. it's not so easy for the average Joe...
Well this is just plain wrong... in most countries that follow the Berne Convention the default assumption in law is that something (this is true in the US since 1990 or so.. i could google but i am lazy this morning) is copyrighted unless it is explicitly stated not to be. However to make explicit that you are claiming copyright over your words/images/whatever all you need is a notice like "copyright 2007 by Rob Wolfe".
The problem with the "Specialist/Generalist" conversation as it gets played out here is that it eventually degenerates into a "why C/C++/Java/COBOL/... is the right tool to specialize in". If you are a single language "expert" you are useless to me on a real project unless it is as the project's one expert in that bit of the toolkit. Now think about how many of those jobs there are.
I want people that have knowledge of the subject matter that is being dealt with. I do not need a room full of language specialists who spend all day discussing how many pointers can dance on the head of a pin or if it is more appropriate to use case or decode in their select statement (yes, I am a database geek).
Someone earlier hit the nail on the head when they said that it was IT, not CS. I happen to have a CS degree but many very good developers do not. They are folks with degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, math, english, business,... who had a problem to solve at some point and found that they had to write a program to solve it then got hooked on this weird method of making a living
I suppose your car dealership tells you where you can drive your car too. (A Lexus isn't for off-roading!) BTW, how's the kool-aid?
No Kool-Aid required.
If you rip the engine out of your lexus and drop it into your VW Bug you shouldn't expect to go back to the lexus dealer and get much sympathy when it stops working
Now that we've managed to establish our business, we will proceed as follows:
1. Piss off all of our most loyal customers by selectively giving them worse service
2. ??????
3. Profit!
if your most loyal customers are also the ones that cost you more per unit sold to deal with... that IS a good strategy
Tell your biggest customers that they're no longer your priority.
Except that in this case biggest isnt the most profitable or in any measurable way best customer. When most folks think of their biggest customer it is usually synonymous with "best" because they make more money from them. In this case, you profitless from your biggest customers than from your smallest.
When you start a company with a business model you make a lot of assumptions. Perhaps 15 rentals a month was a level of use that never dawned on anyone. Does that mean that they messed up their analysis that led to the business model? Sure it does. Does that mean that they have to take losses, and be sure that someone who is renting 15 dvd's a month is likely to generate posses, because an assumption that is fixable within the contract, was wrong?
I am not usually a profoundly pro-business person but I think that this is a little bit of a tempest in a teacup
Frankly, I'm not too worried about ID. There's just not much to teach about it. Any good biology teacher is going to gloss over it and then get down to the real science.
Sadly, in most jurisdictions there is no requirement that a biology teacher have any actual background in biology, or any science. It is perfectly allowable in most jurisdictions to have someone with a degree in English and a teaching credential to teach physics, or mathematics, or biology. How can someone be expected to effectively teach a subject that they know nothing about?
Has anyone considered the cost to aquire and hold H1-B1 papers for a overseas worker? What about when the contract is up? The company is responsible to return the worker, who pays for that?
I am a Canadian citizen who works in the US at the moment and get regularly told that a potential client wants someone on an H-1B rather than someone on a TN-1 (the easiest on the employer form of visa I have ever seen). The explanation that I am generally given is that they can get someone "longer term" on a 3 year, once renewable, H-1B than on the annually(and perpetually from all indications) renewable TN-1, which is not actually the case. Of course I have also got the explanation that they don't like to deal with Canadians because of "language issues" they have had.
My sneaking thought has always been that it has more to do with the fact that Canadians are not afraid to charge normal market rates and can easily drive home if they discover that they are getting paid $30/hour less than the person sitting beside them. But that could be just me being cynical
As for the cost of returning someone home... get serious, I can buy a 1 way business class ticket to anywhere in the world as well as shipping costs for a full size cargo container for less than $15,000
You havent been paying attention. Oracle isn;t just database anymore. Hasnt been for a long time actually. Personally I think it is a great move for me because maybe it will mean that some of the enterprise level tools will be able to be used with a lighter backend and that means that more folks can afford to hire me
I have never, ever, not once, heard of a company putting an install of SAP in the hands of their own sysadmins without a lot (read 6+ figures worth) of help from SAP certified consultants. It simple doesn't happen.
This is not specific to SAP it also goes for Peoplesoft and any of the Oracle Applications. No matter what you think of the way that they work or the underlying architecture there is no doubt that these are very large, very complex pieces of software and it is quite honestly not possible that an install of SAP was done on ANY platform in 2 days. The usual timeframe for this is at minimum a couple of months and I have seen them drag on for a year or more.
Only the fear of being stuck with a pig, or some external kind of pressure (as at MS), causes 99% of programmers to design and code more responsibly.
I have to agree completely with this statement. There is nothing like having to get up at 3:00 am a few times to fix an abend that crystalizes your resolve to not make a mess the next time. I think that every development programmer should have to do a stint (6 months, not a week) as a support/maintenance programmer. It is amazing how much the time I spent doing operational support has influenced (positively I hope)the development work that I do now.
Microsoft's greatest enemies now are still two for-profit companies- Google and Apple. I'll rest easier when FOSS replaces them (as was promised in 1999). Instead it's just a new master instead of the old one
I love FOSS as much as anyone but please let us get off of the "profit is inherently evil" kick. Personally I like getting a paycheque for my work. It helps me do things like pay for my apartment and car and neat things for my daughter. The only way that happens is if someone makes a profit in order to cut that cheque.
For the record, I live in Canada, pay big taxes happily(well mostly) and get "free"(as in lunch--think about it) health care so please no one accuse me of being some capitalist tool.
It's better to at least attempt to do something about it instead of sit back and watch the train wreck itself.
And sometimes you end up delaying the wreck long enough for it to really pick up speed and cause more damage when it inevitably happens. Sometimes the correct thing is to pull the brake and hope that you can stop before you get to the end of the track.
I never said that code is worthless. What I said is that if that is all the documentation that is available then the application is useless. If you only want to write software for other software developers that is great, however you leave out a huge market if you do that.
As for the medical doctor analogy, would you want someone to remove your spleen with the only guide being a copy of Gray's anatomy?
Of course, the source code also counts as documentation.
When my 70 year old father wants to use his favorite email client to send me a note the source code most definitely does not count as documentation. I am constantly baffled by this argument being brought forward.
The source code is only documentation that is useful to a developer (and sadly often only to the original developer)and unless we get our heads out of the sand and remember that most people that use software are not programmers (you know, the other 99% of the world's population). They dont care if it is written in python, cobol or hand-crafted assember as long as they have something that they can look at and say "oh, so that is how i do that".
Software without people to use it is art. It is pretty to look at and maybe even worthy of praise and admiration. Most people look at software in a different way. It is a tool. It might be well crafted but it has to be useful to someone for a particular purpose.
It is my belief that software without useful user documentation of some sort is not a tool but art and let's face it, in our modern society artists can rarely pay their rent unless they also work as craftsmen or have wealthy sponsors. Look at IBM and other corporate sponsors of FOSS as the Medici families of our time.
If they go too far, a stiffly worded letter to a respectable newspaper will generally put the government back on the "strait and narrow", but occasionally, we have to vote them out.
Unless the last thing they did was toss the newspaper folk in jail. But of course that would never happen now would it.
It's the gray area in between those two extremes that is often difficult to navigate.... In the end, I usually vote for action and/or change over stagnation and handwringing.
So any action is good? I was always of the opinion that if something is a damn dumb idea it pretty much stays a damn dumb idea until conditions change. The creation of a police state is pretty much one of those dumb ideas in my book unless the alternative is the near certainty of getting a bomb dropped on my head.
How about interesting but not germane. The magazine/website PC World that is being referred to in the article is not the same as the STORE being referred to in the post.
Slashdot Mirror
Well this is just plain wrong... in most countries that follow the Berne Convention the default assumption in law is that something (this is true in the US since 1990 or so .. i could google but i am lazy this morning) is copyrighted unless it is explicitly stated not to be. However to make explicit that you are claiming copyright over your words/images/whatever all you need is a notice like "copyright 2007 by Rob Wolfe".
Now really, how hard is that?The next time you get the urge to say something like this go write on the blackboard 1000 times..
"The GPL is not a contract but a license. Contract law does not apply in the same way"The problem with the "Specialist/Generalist" conversation as it gets played out here is that it eventually degenerates into a "why C/C++/Java/COBOL/... is the right tool to specialize in". If you are a single language "expert" you are useless to me on a real project unless it is as the project's one expert in that bit of the toolkit. Now think about how many of those jobs there are.
I want people that have knowledge of the subject matter that is being dealt with. I do not need a room full of language specialists who spend all day discussing how many pointers can dance on the head of a pin or if it is more appropriate to use case or decode in their select statement (yes, I am a database geek).
Someone earlier hit the nail on the head when they said that it was IT, not CS. I happen to have a CS degree but many very good developers do not. They are folks with degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, math, english, business,... who had a problem to solve at some point and found that they had to write a program to solve it then got hooked on this weird method of making a living
On what planet is $70K an average salary?
True enough, although it would certainly stop some of the horrible things being done in the name of pimping rides. hmmmmmmmm
No Kool-Aid required.
If you rip the engine out of your lexus and drop it into your VW Bug you shouldn't expect to go back to the lexus dealer and get much sympathy when it stops working
if your most loyal customers are also the ones that cost you more per unit sold to deal with... that IS a good strategy
Except that in this case biggest isnt the most profitable or in any measurable way best customer. When most folks think of their biggest customer it is usually synonymous with "best" because they make more money from them. In this case, you profitless from your biggest customers than from your smallest.
When you start a company with a business model you make a lot of assumptions. Perhaps 15 rentals a month was a level of use that never dawned on anyone. Does that mean that they messed up their analysis that led to the business model? Sure it does. Does that mean that they have to take losses, and be sure that someone who is renting 15 dvd's a month is likely to generate posses, because an assumption that is fixable within the contract, was wrong?
I am not usually a profoundly pro-business person but I think that this is a little bit of a tempest in a teacup
Sadly, in most jurisdictions there is no requirement that a biology teacher have any actual background in biology, or any science. It is perfectly allowable in most jurisdictions to have someone with a degree in English and a teaching credential to teach physics, or mathematics, or biology. How can someone be expected to effectively teach a subject that they know nothing about?
I am a Canadian citizen who works in the US at the moment and get regularly told that a potential client wants someone on an H-1B rather than someone on a TN-1 (the easiest on the employer form of visa I have ever seen). The explanation that I am generally given is that they can get someone "longer term" on a 3 year, once renewable, H-1B than on the annually(and perpetually from all indications) renewable TN-1, which is not actually the case. Of course I have also got the explanation that they don't like to deal with Canadians because of "language issues" they have had.
My sneaking thought has always been that it has more to do with the fact that Canadians are not afraid to charge normal market rates and can easily drive home if they discover that they are getting paid $30/hour less than the person sitting beside them. But that could be just me being cynical
As for the cost of returning someone home ... get serious, I can buy a 1 way business class ticket to anywhere in the world as well as shipping costs for a full size cargo container for less than $15,000
You havent been paying attention. Oracle isn;t just database anymore. Hasnt been for a long time actually. Personally I think it is a great move for me because maybe it will mean that some of the enterprise level tools will be able to be used with a lighter backend and that means that more folks can afford to hire me
I have never, ever, not once, heard of a company putting an install of SAP in the hands of their own sysadmins without a lot (read 6+ figures worth) of help from SAP certified consultants. It simple doesn't happen.
This is not specific to SAP it also goes for Peoplesoft and any of the Oracle Applications. No matter what you think of the way that they work or the underlying architecture there is no doubt that these are very large, very complex pieces of software and it is quite honestly not possible that an install of SAP was done on ANY platform in 2 days. The usual timeframe for this is at minimum a couple of months and I have seen them drag on for a year or more.
Oh, and yes, I am a consultant too.
I have to agree completely with this statement. There is nothing like having to get up at 3:00 am a few times to fix an abend that crystalizes your resolve to not make a mess the next time. I think that every development programmer should have to do a stint (6 months, not a week) as a support/maintenance programmer. It is amazing how much the time I spent doing operational support has influenced (positively I hope)the development work that I do now.
I love FOSS as much as anyone but please let us get off of the "profit is inherently evil" kick. Personally I like getting a paycheque for my work. It helps me do things like pay for my apartment and car and neat things for my daughter. The only way that happens is if someone makes a profit in order to cut that cheque.
For the record, I live in Canada, pay big taxes happily(well mostly) and get "free"(as in lunch--think about it) health care so please no one accuse me of being some capitalist tool.
And sometimes you end up delaying the wreck long enough for it to really pick up speed and cause more damage when it inevitably happens. Sometimes the correct thing is to pull the brake and hope that you can stop before you get to the end of the track.
As for the medical doctor analogy, would you want someone to remove your spleen with the only guide being a copy of Gray's anatomy?
When my 70 year old father wants to use his favorite email client to send me a note the source code most definitely does not count as documentation. I am constantly baffled by this argument being brought forward.
The source code is only documentation that is useful to a developer (and sadly often only to the original developer)and unless we get our heads out of the sand and remember that most people that use software are not programmers (you know, the other 99% of the world's population). They dont care if it is written in python, cobol or hand-crafted assember as long as they have something that they can look at and say "oh, so that is how i do that".
Software without people to use it is art. It is pretty to look at and maybe even worthy of praise and admiration. Most people look at software in a different way. It is a tool. It might be well crafted but it has to be useful to someone for a particular purpose.
It is my belief that software without useful user documentation of some sort is not a tool but art and let's face it, in our modern society artists can rarely pay their rent unless they also work as craftsmen or have wealthy sponsors. Look at IBM and other corporate sponsors of FOSS as the Medici families of our time.
nice line but wrong. Much of the cost of hardware (read CPU's) is R&D (as has been stated several times in this thread)... sounds a lot like IP to me.
The other thing to remember is that there aren't 100 companies making identical legal copies of XP. Software is not yet a commodity, memory chips are.
Unless the last thing they did was toss the newspaper folk in jail. But of course that would never happen now would it.
So any action is good? I was always of the opinion that if something is a damn dumb idea it pretty much stays a damn dumb idea until conditions change. The creation of a police state is pretty much one of those dumb ideas in my book unless the alternative is the near certainty of getting a bomb dropped on my head.
Insightful??
How about interesting but not germane. The magazine/website PC World that is being referred to in the article is not the same as the STORE being referred to in the post.
All the time actually. Happened to me a few years ago and I am not famous and/or stupendously talented.
To which I offer the following quote
You might want to look at their current practices a little closer.