Re: Gnome root window...

[Bill Mullen]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> > On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, "Bill" == Bill Mullen wrote:
> 
>   Bill> As Gnome appears to have no corresponding ability to
>   Bill> repeatedly execute a program/script for this as KDE does, and
>   Bill> completely ignores the attempts of xplanetbg to draw to the
>   Bill> root window directly, I'm at a loss as to how to get some or
>   Bill> all of this functionality going under Gnome.
> 
> I'm not claiming that I know anything about Gnome or KDE, nor do I fully
> understand exactly what you're trying to do, but couldn't you use 'cron'
> to repeatedly exec your program for you?  Is there a reason it must be a
> desktop/window manager built-in capability?

I'd have to say "yes and no, adding up to maybe." :)

The idea is to allow any user of the machine to choose their WM as they
usually do, and then provide for their use - in a fashion compatible with
the way that that WM manages the root window - the ability to run any one
of a small group of scripts, each of which will initiate an animated
display of Earth on their root window which will run for the duration of
their X session (while retaining the ability to stop this behavior easily
with a similarly simple procedure).

While the HOWTO is targeted at Mandrake users (and I'm trying to keep the
whole thing as newbie-friendly as possible), anyone capable of installing
Hari Nair's Xplanet and a recent wget on their system should be able to
use the tarball as well, with a little editing of the file paths in the
xplanet.clouds.sh and install.sh scripts therein. The other scripts might
work "out of the box", as they merely invoke either xplanet or xplanetbg
with varying arguments, but check the paths in them just to be safe. I
encourage any fans of desktop eye candy here on the list to give it a
whirl, and to tell me what they think. :)

With the "lighter" WMs, it works superbly with the "xpbg" script and its
variants; the window is drawn directly by xplanetbg, and a simple "killall
xplanetbg" and a restart of the WM brings the background back to the way
that the WM originally set it. This allows one to, for example, put "xpbg"  
on one gkrellm button, and "killall xplanetbg" on another, and start and
stop the thing easily using gkrellm from within any of these WMs.

Unfortunately, KDE and Gnome do not permit this. For KDE, I have included
some scripts (named "xpbg-kde*") that work with KDE's built-in capability
to repeatedly execute a program to create a file, which it then displays
as wallpaper.  It means that the "orbiting vantage point" feature of the
standard "xpbg*" scripts is unavailable, but otherwise it works, and the
install script places KDE-style "desktop items" in the appropriate place
(on Mandrake boxes, at least) to make this easily available to all users.
They must manually change their existing wallpaper settings within KDE to
choose one of these options, and then must manually change back to regain
their earlier settings, but this suffices for my purposes.

Cron is certainly one method I can explore for automating the process
under Gnome; as it is now, the install script already configures the
system crontab to retrieve and process the cloud data (by executing
xplanet.clouds.sh hourly). My only concern with using cron here is that it
is vital that the "start the display" scripts be executable with only
user-level privileges, and it is quite possible that the use of cron may
not be available to everyone; for example, Mandrake comes with the popular
Bastille system for script-based firewalling and system hardening, and one
option therein is to restrict the use of cron to only "administrative
accounts". I haven't the first clue how one would test for whether or not
this restriction has been implemented on any given system. Also, some
newbies unfortunately fail to grasp the point of cron and disable it, not
realizing what they've affected until their log files have finally grown
to a size that fills the partition on which they reside, and their systems
begin to exhibit the usual difficulties. :)

It would seem that the method that will provide the highest level of
compatibility with various system configurations, while retaining as much
"newbie-friendliness" as possible, is a series of "start" scripts similar
to the KDE series but which, instead of merely generating a JPEG file and
returning the filename for the WM to display itself, would first generate
the file, then call xsetroot (or similar) to display it, then sleep a bit,
then loop back to the beginning and restart (thereby mimicking the daemon
functionality of the "xpbg*" scripts, and bypassing Gnome entirely).  A
single companion "stop" script, which would simply kill whichever of the
various "start" scripts is running (by executing killall on each possible
script name in turn) would then be possible.

The only drawback to this method seems to be the need to determine from
within these "start" scripts the geometry of the current root window,

Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Bill Mullen]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Rich Cloutier wrote:

> The fact of the matter is, all those programs are Windows based (or at
> least WERE until Linux.) And one kid I know actually complains that his
> P4 system can't play an audio CD, watch TV (ATI All-in-wonder) surf the
> web, and chat with his friends all at the same time. So he wants a
> faster computer. Not because he can't play games; his system is
> perfectly capable of that, but because when he does all that, his audio
> CD skips. And it's because the OS is not real time. How does the problem
> get solved? Throw more hardware at it. A true real time OS COULD indeed
> play that audio CD without skipping and do the other stuff too.

I have no idea if Linux qualifies as a "real time OS" or not, but as luck
would have it, as I read your post it occurred to me that I am doing
exactly these things at the moment (and, obviously, answering my mail as
well) on a system of lesser horsepower than that one (a PIII/667)! And my
CD isn't skipping, either. :)

I'm running Mandrake 8.2 (stock kernel 2.4.18-6mdk) on it, with 256M RAM,
3 small ATA/33 HDs, an IDE DVD-ROM drive, an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 AGP
card with 32M, a SoundBlaster Live X-Gamer 5.1 sound card, 2 10/100 NICs
(only one in use, though), a USR PCI voice modem, and 2 mice (a PS/2
corded three-button and a USB cordless trackball, both Logitech).

For software, it's MDK 8.2, Xfree86 4.2.0 with the Gatos project's ati.2
driver, kdm, Xfce WM, esd, Xawtv (using the tuner on the card, not either
external input), Gaim 0.59 (online w/ ICQ, Yahoo, and two AIM names),
Opera 6.02 (viewing pages running Java applets, Java is Sun's 1.4.0),
Gkrellm controlling XMMS (and playing from the DVD-ROM), and a couple of
gnome-terminal windows, one of which is an ssh session to my server box,
running Pine 4.44 from there. Oh, yeah, and Gkrellm is also keeping me
apprised of the current weather conditions at the airport down the street
from me, and I have the xplanetbg daemon (mentioned in a different thread)
redrawing my root window every five minutes.

All this going on, and the box isn't even breaking a sweat, much less 
skipping the audio:

moon@tvbox:~$ uptime
  6:08am  up 1 day, 15 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.22, 0.07, 0.02

"Real time" or not, it's a helluva "Real OS", and it makes excellent use
of every hardware configuration I've introduced it to so far.


Just my $0.02USD :)

-- 

Bill Mullen
6:17am, 2002-08-13



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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Jerry Feldman]

No, 2K is the lowest I've gone. We have a site license at work, but there 
is a problem with the key.
I prefer Linux. 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 9:09pm, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > You're probably correct. I don't see any benefit for a normal home user to
> > get a 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 for $700.
> 
>   Heh.  You've never tried Windows XP then.  ;-)
-- 
--
Gerald Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boston Computer Solutions and Consulting
ICQ#156300 PGP Key ID:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Jerry Feldman]

Early implementations of MS Windows were horrible. 3.1 was the first 
version of Windows that had any merit at all.
All GUIs demand much from hardware. All are insatiable. 
"Brenda A. Bell" wrote:

> Since the introduction of Win95, absolutely... I was more thinking about
> the early 90's when Windows 2 and 3.1 demanded more from the hardware
> and everytime it got more, it was never enough... then comes NT which
> requires even more because its intended use is a business environment...
> none of these were really targetted for gaming platforms, but I believe
> their quickly increasing resource requirements paved the way.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9


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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Michael O'Donnell]

 [ This thread seems to indicate that the 'G'
   in GNHLUG actually stands for Geriatric... ]


>As for IBM and the 68K -- one of the initial PC specs
>was backward CP/M compatibility.  The 8088 seemed a
>logical choice to fulfill this unfulfilled "feature:"
>everything the 8080 was, and faster, to boot.

Those who ever wrote a CP/M program might appreciate
this trivia: you can "call 5' (the CP/M equivalanet
of a syscall) in a DOS program and it will actually
work because at offset 5 in the Program Segment
Prefix (PSP, a reserved area) they were careful
to code a jump to a jump to a wrapper routine that
would leap off into some undocumented DOS code that
eventually did something useful.  I believe that a
number of people had the notion that blind mechanical
translation of CP/M binaries into 8088 binaries would
be a less trautmatic way to transition customers onto
the new platform so they arranged for certain hax to
be introduced into DOS to support that.  And I think
there was also some effort to make some of the 8088
intruction formats, addressing modes and (damn them
for eternity on this one) register sets similar to
the 8080 to facilitate this same "migration path"...


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Re: My 1st computer (was: 'My favorite platform')

[Kevin D. Clark]

"Tom Buskey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> My intro to Unix came in college when my roommate showed me rn on a 
> gould.  There was a time when you could read every post on usenet :-)

My introduction to Usenet came at UNH, first semester freshman year.
I just kept on cd'ing around, getting myself acquainted with the
directory structure.  At some point, I stumbled across a Usenet spool
directory and noticed that there were all of these files out in this
directory -- sometimes new files appeared, and sometimes old files
disappeared.  I knew it wasn't BITNET, and this could only be a Good
Thing.

I actually lurked on Usenet this way for a while until I mistyped "rm"
one day and found a "proper" newsreader...  (-:

--kevin
-- 
Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)
cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E)
alumni.unh.edu!kdc

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RE: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Brian B. Riley \(N1BQ\) ListAcct]

... hell ... as long as we are reminiscing about the good old days. The
first computer I worked on had a punched paper tape operating system that
paged 128 byte chunks into a 256 byte core memory space. All the "i/o" was
via a Flexowriter. The first major upgrade to the OS was when they started
delivering it on mylar tape so it only had to be replaced once a month or so
instead of twice a week!

   cheers ... bbr


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 9:57 PM
To: Greater NH Linux User Group
Subject: Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)


On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 9:52pm, Erik Price wrote:
> I remember my first Macintosh.  It did not come with a hard disk!  Just a
> floppy drive.

  "Why, back in my day, we didn't even have keyboards.  We had to chisel the
characters into the screen!  And we liked it!"

  ;-)



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multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[Michael O'Donnell]

It looks like the GNHLUG archives are
now distributed across five different
repositories, depending on which address
a given posting was sent to:

   [EMAIL PROTECTED]/
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]/
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]/
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]/
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]/

I regard this to be A Bad Thing(tm) and
additional incentive to figure out what the
One True List Address is.  I recommend we
then disable all others.

Do you think we could convince the folks at
mail-archive.com to coalesce those five
archives into one?

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RE: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Jerry Feldman]

While my first computer was an IBM 7044 mainframe (punch card input only).  
after a few years in the Army playing knob dicker to grunts, I worked at 
Burger King Corporation. The Burger King POS was a 4K PDP8-E. No disk, no 
tape. 
The modem was a Novation modem card. We did the internal timing for 1200 
baud (at that time, baud was equivalent to bps). We developed our own 
protocol. The PDP8 was a 12 bit machine with data stored mainly as 12 or 24 
bit integers. We polled each store nightly from Miami. We had to write the 
code to strike the hammers on the drum for the printers. Since the PDP8s 
were core memory, power fail was:
save all registers (the 8 only had one accumulator and a 1 bit link). That 
4K system could do quite a bit maintaining inventory, cash, hourly sales 
and a few other functions. 
The keyboard was not ASCII. We had to read the row and the column to figure 
out what key was pressed. 
The code we wrote was extremely tight. The comm routine was vectored so we 
could transfer a new version. The steps we used were to first transfer a 
new comm routine to the scratchpad area. When complete, then update the 
vectors pointing to the comm and scratchpad. Once the new comm routine was 
running, we could transfer a new program. Normally all our data transfers 
used physical addresses, which were not very portable. 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 10:03, Brian B. Riley (N1BQ) ListAcc wrote:

>   ... hell ... as long as we are reminiscing about the good old days.
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

Recently, like at least one other participant on this list, I took an early
retirement package from the new HP. I've spent about 25 years working in the
computer industry and consider myself to be a fairly experienced, highly
skilled systems engineer. A bit more background: I came to the United States
at the age of 21 having met and married an American. I served in the
American military as a foreigner (including a secret security clearance) and
gained employment at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1979. The rest of my
career, has been spent working in various capacities, hardware, software,
QA, development, management, support engineering.

Like a lot of folks leaving a big computer company I have noted the extent
to which American companies have been replacing domestic workers with H1-B
program employees or simply shipping the jobs off-shore. Last night I
watched a segment on "The News Hour" (PBS) which featured a conversation
with Thomas Friedman who had just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka and the
Indian sub-continent. Tom described the extent of the success of Indian
companies at both out sourcing and setting up call centers for large
American companies. He cited Dell, American Express, GE amongst others who
had moved their call centers to India. I also have friends working at major
out-sourcing companies who talk about the pressure being brought by major
American corporations to move their engineering support operations
off-shore. Given that some of the products that have been out-sourced are
vital parts of the computing infrastructure (middleware and critical OS
components), I frankly question whether this is a good idea given the noise
in the press about 'cyberwarfare'. One other interesting commentary was a
recent one by John Dvorak. Dvorak said that he has noticed that most
American teenagers don't have summer jobs. He also noted that in Silicon
Valley, "Grey hairs" are now being hired over younger workers. He said "The
grey hairs have been out of work so long that they'll now work for much less
than they wanted before".

maddog in his "Front Porch" interview mentioned that a bullet item in his
standard Linux presentation describes the adoption of Linux as 'inevitable'.
Can we say the same about domestic high tech jobs moving out of this
country? We have already moved most manufacturing to China and other low
labor cost countries. The powers that be have been telling America's young
people that they should look to their future in the "knowledge industry". Is
there any point in them spending 100's of thousands for an education in
Computer Science? Will we all be saying "Do you want fries with that?" and
if so, who will be the consumers that the nation's economy depends on?

I'd like to hear a discusion. It's been my experience that many if not most
engineers are just slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun in terms of their
politics. They seem to take a "Survival of the fittest" approach to these
problems. The idea of labor unions (and I know there are plenty of arguments
against them) are heretical to them. Thoughts?

-Alex


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Re: multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[bscott]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, at 10:32am, Michael O'Donnell wrote:
> It looks like the GNHLUG archives are now distributed across five
> different repositories, depending on which address a given posting was
> sent to ...

  It will likely get worse in the future as things change again.

  At some point, we want to have a single, unified mail archive, under our
own control, on our own website, on our own server.  When that day comes,
there will be much rejoicing.  Until then, I think we may just have to be
dissatisfied.

> I recommend we then disable all others.

  In some cases, that is not possible, for any number of reasons.  We have
to work within certain limitations, in software, hardware, and facilities
and services.  Remember, all of the GNHLUG stuff is done "for free".

  If you want to discuss this further, I encourage you to subscribe to the
"gnhlug-org" list, which is for organizational issues (like this one).  :)

> Do you think we could convince the folks at mail-archive.com to coalesce
> those five archives into one?

  Maybe, but I have my doubts.  That system works because it is maintenance
free.  The system simply archives any mail sent to .  Each
list archive springs into existence with the first message sent to it.

-- 
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not |
| necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or  |
| organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.  |

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[jkinz]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 10:34:24AM -0400, Hewitt Tech wrote:
[[[some lines chopped out of the original to shorten this post
> 
> Like a lot of folks leaving a big computer company I have noted the extent
> to which American companies have been replacing domestic workers with H1-B
> program employees or simply shipping the jobs off-shore. Last night I
> watched a segment on "The News Hour" (PBS) which featured a conversation
> with Thomas Friedman who had just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka and the
> Indian sub-continent. Tom described the extent of the success of Indian
> companies at both out sourcing and setting up call centers for large
> American companies. He cited Dell, American Express, GE amongst others who
> had moved their call centers to India. I also have friends working at major
> 
> maddog in his "Front Porch" interview mentioned that a bullet item in his
> standard Linux presentation describes the adoption of Linux as 'inevitable'.
> Can we say the same about domestic high tech jobs moving out of this
> country? We have already moved most manufacturing to China and other low
> labor cost countries. The powers that be have been telling America's young
> people that they should look to their future in the "knowledge industry". Is
> there any point in them spending 100's of thousands for an education in
> Computer Science? Will we all be saying "Do you want fries with that?" and
> if so, who will be the consumers that the nation's economy depends on?
> 
> I'd like to hear a discusion. It's been my experience that many if not most
> engineers are just slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun in terms of their
> politics. They seem to take a "Survival of the fittest" approach to these
> problems. The idea of labor unions (and I know there are plenty of arguments
> against them) are heretical to them. Thoughts?
> 

Hi Alex:
I would re-phrase your subject line a little.  American tech workers aren't 
obsolete, they are just much higher priced than similar and less mature 
(read "slightly less capable sometimes") talent pools available in other
parts of the world.

Is the moving of American Hi-tech jobs offshore inevitable ? Sadly Yes.

I saw figures indicating that the costs associated with employing India
based and China based engineers were one fifth and one tenth respectively
of the cost for employing an American engineer.  Note this is the
"burdened cost" which includes all benefits, office space, utilities,
administration etc.  This is not a one for one comparison of salaries.

It is much easier and cheaper to create a software engineering plant 
than it is to create a manufacturing plant. Compare the cost of desks, 
phones, and some PC's to building manufacturing infrastructure and 
importing processing equipment. 

The emigration of tech jobs is not only inevitable, it will happen even 
faster than manufacturing jobs are being exported.

Now any ideas on how American engineers can compete in this type of market ?


-- 
Jeff Kinz, Director, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA.  "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" 
copyright 1995-2002.  Use restricted to non-UCE uses. Any other use is an 
acceptance of the offer at http://www.ultranet.com/~jkinz/policy.html.
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" copyright 2002.  Use is restricted. Any use is an 
acceptance of the offer at http://users.rcn.com/jkinz/policy.html.

(¬_-o)
//\ eLviintuaxbilse/\\
V_/_  _\_V   


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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

When the economy was in good shape, H1-B was used to fill in for positions 
that were not being filled. Very similar to the need to migrant workers in 
the Southwest. When the economy went sour, companies found that the foreign 
workers (mostly from India) were cheaper. 
Much of the displacement has been in system administration. Unfortunately 
Congress opened the floodgate. In retrospect, H1-B is a very bad thing, but 
when it was first proposed it was a necessary thing. 
But, for many years companies, such as Digital, Compaq and HP had foreign 
engineering. (Both HP and Digital have engineering centers in India). 
I worked for HP in 1999 as an onsite consultant in Raytheon's Bedford 
Prison facility. One major component of HP-UX (the realtime extensions 
required by the military radar programs) were written in HP's India 
Engineering Center. At one meeting, the Army representitive really grilled 
my boss. This was the system that is supposed to intercept and destroy 
enemy missiles. 
(Think of 2 Superdomes sitting in a trailer in Iraq). 
Bob Davis did a big song and dance on that one. 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 10:34, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> Like a lot of folks leaving a big computer company I have noted the extent
> to which American companies have been replacing domestic workers with H1-B
> program employees or simply shipping the jobs off-shore. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[bscott]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, at 10:34am, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> maddog in his "Front Porch" interview mentioned that a bullet item in his
> standard Linux presentation describes the adoption of Linux as
> 'inevitable'.  Can we say the same about domestic high tech jobs moving
> out of this country?

  I believe you can same the same about pretty much any job that does not
require one to by physically present in this country (e.g., house cleaning).

  Given: Business has gone global.

  There is no incentive for companies to pay for much higher priced US
workers when they can get similar levels of work from other country's
workers.  If enough US money flows into a country (like India) to push up
their standard of living, the work will then begin to flow to the next one
down on the ladder of national economic development.

  This process will continue until a state of equilibrium is reached, or
outside factors influence things.  A likely "outside factor" would be the
fact that we will exhaust the Earth's resources to support us fairly soon in
this scenario.

  We live in interesting times.

-- 
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not |
| necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or  |
| organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.  |


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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[jkinz]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 11:17:02AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> When the economy was in good shape, H1-B was used to fill in for positions 
> that were not being filled. Very similar to the need to migrant workers in 
> the Southwest. When the economy went sour, companies found that the foreign 
> workers (mostly from India) were cheaper. 
> Much of the displacement has been in system administration. 

Hi Jerry, Did you mean that H1-B persons were displacing Sysadmins or 
that Sysadmin positions were being moved offshore ?

I'm asking because what I have seen is that Sysadmin postions are staying
here in the States (in reduced numbers of course), and software development,
software maintenance, customer support functions are being moved offshore.


-- 
Jeff Kinz, Director, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA.  "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" 
copyright 1995-2002.  Use restricted to non-UCE uses. Any other use is an 
acceptance of the offer at http://www.ultranet.com/~jkinz/policy.html.
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" copyright 2002.  Use is restricted. Any use is an 
acceptance of the offer at http://users.rcn.com/jkinz/policy.html.

(¬_-o)
//\ eLviintuaxbilse/\\
V_/_  _\_V   
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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[pll]

In a message dated: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 06:18:26 EDT
Bill Mullen said:

>On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Rich Cloutier wrote:
>
>> The fact of the matter is, all those programs are Windows based (or at
>> least WERE until Linux.) And one kid I know actually complains that his
>> P4 system can't play an audio CD, watch TV (ATI All-in-wonder) surf the
>> web, and chat with his friends all at the same time. So he wants a
>> faster computer. Not because he can't play games; his system is
>> perfectly capable of that, but because when he does all that, his audio
>> CD skips. And it's because the OS is not real time. How does the problem
>> get solved? Throw more hardware at it. A true real time OS COULD indeed
>> play that audio CD without skipping and do the other stuff too.

Ahm, yeah, an RTOS *could* do all that, but it's not necessary.  I 
suspect that the real problem is either lack of memory, lack of swap, 
or conflicting configurations of various components.

I've seen a lot more done with a lot less computer and it was running 
Windows NT 4.0, which is *far* from an RTOS.
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
--
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!


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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

Both actually. 
I know several good system admin people who were replaced by H1-B workers. 
A friend of mine owns a recruiting house and agrees with this. 

In our global economy, it is only natural that jobs are also exported. This 
has happened in many other industries. 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 11:33, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi Jerry, Did you mean that H1-B persons were displacing Sysadmins or 
> that Sysadmin positions were being moved offshore ?
> 
> I'm asking because what I have seen is that Sysadmin postions are staying
> here in the States (in reduced numbers of course), and software development,
> software maintenance, customer support functions are being moved offshore.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[John Abreau]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

>   It will likely get worse in the future as things change again.
> 
>   At some point, we want to have a single, unified mail archive, under our
> own control, on our own website, on our own server.  When that day comes,
> there will be much rejoicing.  Until then, I think we may just have to be
> dissatisfied.

Mailman includes pipermail for its archives, which builds them from plain
mbox-format mailboxes. When I built the current BLU server last year, we 
also
had our mail archives all over the place, much of it existing only in my
personal archives at home. 

As part of the server preparation, I tracked down most of them and 
consolidated most of it into a single 7-year archive. A few of my
Jaz cartridges had gone bad, and I found myself missing messages in
two gaps, one spanning two months and the other spanning seven months,
but one of my members was able to fill in most of it. 

Where are the new gnhlug lists hosted now? I take it they're not on a 
server
controlled by the group?


-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER [EMAIL PROTECTED] / YAHOO abreauj
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99

   Some people say, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
   I often respond, "When elephants fight, it's the grass
   that gets trampled."






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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

I don't see any compelling reason for system admin jobs to stay here either.
Once a company's systems have been made remote capable, then practically any
admin function can be performed remotely. The irony in this is that American
management has resisted the idea of technical folks working remotely (from
home for instance) but now embrace outsourcing with enthusiasm.

-Alex

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jerry Feldman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 11:33 AM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 11:17:02AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> When the economy was in good shape, H1-B was used to fill in for positions
> that were not being filled. Very similar to the need to migrant workers in
> the Southwest. When the economy went sour, companies found that the
foreign
> workers (mostly from India) were cheaper.
> Much of the displacement has been in system administration.

Hi Jerry, Did you mean that H1-B persons were displacing Sysadmins or
that Sysadmin positions were being moved offshore ?

I'm asking because what I have seen is that Sysadmin postions are staying
here in the States (in reduced numbers of course), and software development,
software maintenance, customer support functions are being moved offshore.


--
Jeff Kinz, Director, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA.  "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
copyright 1995-2002.  Use restricted to non-UCE uses. Any other use is an
acceptance of the offer at http://www.ultranet.com/~jkinz/policy.html.
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" copyright 2002.  Use is restricted. Any use is an
acceptance of the offer at http://users.rcn.com/jkinz/policy.html.

(¬_-o)
//\ eLviintuaxbilse/\\
V_/_  _\_V
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

Another irony is that I have observed that trade workers, people who install
your carpet, paint your house, build your house etc.., are often much more
successful than the average college graduate. I'd be the first to admit that
they often work damned hard for their money but they also participate in the
'underground' economy - cash only. They don't pay the same amount of taxes
that high tech employees pay.

-Alex

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


> On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, at 10:34am, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> > maddog in his "Front Porch" interview mentioned that a bullet item in
his
> > standard Linux presentation describes the adoption of Linux as
> > 'inevitable'.  Can we say the same about domestic high tech jobs moving
> > out of this country?
>
>   I believe you can same the same about pretty much any job that does not
> require one to by physically present in this country (e.g., house
cleaning).
>
>   Given: Business has gone global.
>
>   There is no incentive for companies to pay for much higher priced US
> workers when they can get similar levels of work from other country's
> workers.  If enough US money flows into a country (like India) to push up
> their standard of living, the work will then begin to flow to the next one
> down on the ladder of national economic development.
>
>   This process will continue until a state of equilibrium is reached, or
> outside factors influence things.  A likely "outside factor" would be the
> fact that we will exhaust the Earth's resources to support us fairly soon
in
> this scenario.
>
>   We live in interesting times.
>
> --
> Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
not |
> | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or
|
> | organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.
|
>
>
> ___
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>

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

BTW, check out this story on H1-B:

http://computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/labor/story/0,10801,73411,00.h
tml

-Alex

- Original Message -
From: "Hewitt Tech" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


> Another irony is that I have observed that trade workers, people who
install
> your carpet, paint your house, build your house etc.., are often much more
> successful than the average college graduate. I'd be the first to admit
that
> they often work damned hard for their money but they also participate in
the
> 'underground' economy - cash only. They don't pay the same amount of taxes
> that high tech employees pay.
>
> -Alex
>
> - Original Message -
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 11:29 AM
> Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?
>
>
> > On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, at 10:34am, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> > > maddog in his "Front Porch" interview mentioned that a bullet item in
> his
> > > standard Linux presentation describes the adoption of Linux as
> > > 'inevitable'.  Can we say the same about domestic high tech jobs
moving
> > > out of this country?
> >
> >   I believe you can same the same about pretty much any job that does
not
> > require one to by physically present in this country (e.g., house
> cleaning).
> >
> >   Given: Business has gone global.
> >
> >   There is no incentive for companies to pay for much higher priced US
> > workers when they can get similar levels of work from other country's
> > workers.  If enough US money flows into a country (like India) to push
up
> > their standard of living, the work will then begin to flow to the next
one
> > down on the ladder of national economic development.
> >
> >   This process will continue until a state of equilibrium is reached, or
> > outside factors influence things.  A likely "outside factor" would be
the
> > fact that we will exhaust the Earth's resources to support us fairly
soon
> in
> > this scenario.
> >
> >   We live in interesting times.
> >
> > --
> > Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
> not |
> > | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity
or
> |
> > | organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any
kind.
> |
> >
> >
> > ___
> > gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
> >
>
> ___
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>

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Andrew W. Gaunt]

It's my opinion that system adminstration is more than working with
computers. There is a social/human interaction component of working
with your customers and delivering what's best for them. You might
even want to go to lunch and have a beer with them. When administration
services are remoted to far off lands in differing time zones, this
is largely lost, resulting in diminished level of service and commitment.

One gets what one pays for.

-- 
__
 | 0|___||.  Andrew Gaunt *nix Sys. Admin., etc.
_| _| : : }  [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www-cde.mv.lucent.com/~quantum
 -(O)-==-o\  [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.gaunt.org


Hewitt Tech wrote:
> 
> I don't see any compelling reason for system admin jobs to stay here either.
> Once a company's systems have been made remote capable, then practically any
> admin function can be performed remotely. The irony in this is that American
> management has resisted the idea of technical folks working remotely (from
> home for instance) but now embrace outsourcing with enthusiasm.
> 
> -Alex
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

I think that same argument applies to software development to some extent as
well. But the bottom line is the bottom line. Business's motto is "cheaper"
and the social costs aren't anywhere in the equation. To make matters worse,
the logic for out-sourcing is very compelling. The downside to this is that
if the feds are right and there is a cyberwar coming, in some measure it
will have been enabled by critical pieces of software finding it's way to
places where the people don't have our interests at heart (and no I don't
mean to impune any particular group).

I do believe that open source is a good counter measure to some of this.
I.E., if everyone can see into the sources, then it's a lot harder to
compromise the software. When proprietary middleware finds its way to some
place where nefarious people might want to do something nasty, that code is
still black box to the end users. You have no way of knowing that the code
might have been compromised.

-Alex

P.S. I did find the 'trojan' planted in SSH an interesting developement. I'm
using Cygwin on my Windows 2k box and I immediately started checking the SSH
code that came with it to see if it had been compromised (it hadn't).

- Original Message -
From: "Andrew W. Gaunt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Hewitt Tech" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


>
> It's my opinion that system adminstration is more than working with
> computers. There is a social/human interaction component of working
> with your customers and delivering what's best for them. You might
> even want to go to lunch and have a beer with them. When administration
> services are remoted to far off lands in differing time zones, this
> is largely lost, resulting in diminished level of service and commitment.
>
> One gets what one pays for.
>
> --
> __
>  | 0|___||.  Andrew Gaunt *nix Sys. Admin., etc.
> _| _| : : }  [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www-cde.mv.lucent.com/~quantum
>  -(O)-==-o\  [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.gaunt.org
>
>
> Hewitt Tech wrote:
> >
> > I don't see any compelling reason for system admin jobs to stay here
either.
> > Once a company's systems have been made remote capable, then practically
any
> > admin function can be performed remotely. The irony in this is that
American
> > management has resisted the idea of technical folks working remotely
(from
> > home for instance) but now embrace outsourcing with enthusiasm.
> >
> > -Alex
> ___
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>

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Re: multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[jbd]

After poking around a bit (which I *really don't* have time to do for the next 
few days - but I needed a break), I found that most, if not all, of the 
messages on the various lists displayed by mail-archive are different. So I 
suspect this is jab.org's problem. Now, if someone wants to go through the pain 
of combining the lists for the archive site, then please contact the 
maintainers of the archive site. They've been pretty good at keeping the site 
up and running for the past several years, so they might be receptive, but I 
would strongly recommend against pushing them to adopt something they don't 
offer.

Also, as bscott pointed out in a subsequent message, things will get better 
once things improve (well, duh.) But we have to wait a bit - unless someone 
wants to pay a qualified someone to expedite the process (sorry, I still have 
to pay for the roof over my head and groceries on the table - but I'm working 
on that problem too).

In the process of upgrading mailman on the site a few days ago I ran into some 
problems - more with mailman/pipermail than with the upgrade process, and I'm 
trying to track those down. One problem is that email addresses appear on the 
discuss list but not on the org list, despite both lists being explicitly 
configured not to output addresses in the archives. Another problem is that 
mailman's upgrade mechanism will break the existing virtual host configuration -
 so I have to install the new version and "plop" the existing database and 
archives on top of it (after some appropriate hacking). 

These are all do-able things, its just going to take time to do it (which I 
have very little of for the next several weeks).

Now, if someone else wants to do it, and I can trust them to work on a co-lo'ed 
server in a virtual-hosted environment (and its a pretty anemic system too), 
and to do it in a timely fashion, then I'm willing to talk to them. But I'm not 
in a position to pay anyone to do it just now.

Trust me. Things will improve, only it will be at the speed of "free" and not 
at the speed of "profit".

Mike, Ben: I don't mean to be railing at you. Its just that the community seems 
to forget that there is overhead associated with free services, and I happen to 
work for the company that pays for that overhead. I'm just using your messages 
to 1) bring general awareness, and 2) to explain what the "man behind the 
curtain" is doing.

--Bruce

Quoting Michael O'Donnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> It looks like the GNHLUG archives are
> now distributed across five different
> repositories, ...
>...
> I regard this to be A Bad Thing(tm) and
> additional incentive to figure out what the
> One True List Address is.  I recommend we
> then disable all others.


-
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 13:21, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> I think that same argument applies to software development to some extent as
> well. But the bottom line is the bottom line. Business's motto is "cheaper"
> and the social costs aren't anywhere in the equation.

  And herein lies the stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance of most US
businesspeople.  This is an INCREDIBLY short sighted point of view.  I'm
with the CEO of Chick-Fil-A: People and Principles before profits.  The
profits will come when you have a satisfied workforce that will gladly
devote themselves to your company.  Many other factors must be in place,
of course, but this is paramount.
  Not long ago, I left a job working for a guy who lamented 'so much for
corporate loyality.'  There is so little corporate loyalty solely
because the corporations have brought it on themselves.  I have *no*
sympathy for their plight.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Richard Soule]

5 level paper tape? or 8?  I used 5 myself.

There were times when we had to process stuff 'as fast as humanly
possible' (for the U.S. Air Force) and it would usually come my way
because I could get the message on to the tape faster than the modem
could read it.

As I was typing another operator would grab the end of the tape and feed
it into the modem.  While you could make a one or two character mistake
in the body of the message (which required you to 'back the tape up' and
strike out the mistakes), you could make 0 mistakes in the header and
footer. So not only did you have to type fast, you had to be very
accurate.

(This was in the late '80s, I am only 34!)

;-)

Rich

"Brian B. Riley (N1BQ) ListAcct" wrote:
> 
> ... hell ... as long as we are reminiscing about the good old days. The
> first computer I worked on had a punched paper tape operating system that
> paged 128 byte chunks into a 256 byte core memory space. All the "i/o" was
> via a Flexowriter. The first major upgrade to the OS was when they started
> delivering it on mylar tape so it only had to be replaced once a month or so
> instead of twice a week!
> 
>cheers ... bbr
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 9:57 PM
> To: Greater NH Linux User Group
> Subject: Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)
> 
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 9:52pm, Erik Price wrote:
> > I remember my first Macintosh.  It did not come with a hard disk!  Just a
> > floppy drive.
> 
>   "Why, back in my day, we didn't even have keyboards.  We had to chisel the
> characters into the screen!  And we liked it!"
> 
>   ;-)
> 
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begin:vcard 
n:;Richard
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
adr:;;
version:2.1
email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
fn:Richard Soule
end:vcard

Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Richard Soule]

Hewitt Tech wrote:
[major snipage]
> The idea of labor unions (and I know there are plenty of arguments
> against them) are heretical to them. Thoughts?

Given the discussion, I don't see how labor unions could help in any way
whatsoever, and they would certainly be a drag on corporations (Demands
that don't reflect reality) and individuals (Tell my why I am paying
union dues again?).

Rich

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multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[Derek D. Martin]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

> > I recommend we then disable all others.
> 
> In some cases, that is not possible, for any number of reasons.  We
> have to work within certain limitations, in software, hardware, and
> facilities and services.  Remember, all of the GNHLUG stuff is done
> "for free".

I have no computing resources to offer, but since I'm not currently
employed, I can probably offer some sysadmin/engineering time.  Please
contact me off-list if there are things I could do to help out.

And if anyone needs a sysadmin, I'm for sale!  =8^)

- -- 
Derek Martin   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- -
I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG!
GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu
Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Derek D. Martin]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

At some point hitherto, Richard Soule hath spake thusly:
> Hewitt Tech wrote:
> [major snipage]
> > The idea of labor unions (and I know there are plenty of arguments
> > against them) are heretical to them. Thoughts?
> 
> Given the discussion, I don't see how labor unions could help in any way
> whatsoever, and they would certainly be a drag on corporations (Demands
> that don't reflect reality) and individuals (Tell my why I am paying
> union dues again?).

I agree...  This discussion was had on BLU recently as well, and the
only idea that I think came out of that discussion which made sense
was to have such an organization as a lobbying agency to the
legistlature.  I do think this makes some sense.  But I'd prefer that
such an organization had only that as its charter, without all the
other nonsense I've seen from organized labor.


- -- 
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- -
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GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu
Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

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Re: multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[John Abreau]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

> These are all do-able things, its just going to take time to do it (which I 
> have very little of for the next several weeks).
> 
> Now, if someone else wants to do it, and I can trust them to work on a co-lo'ed 
> server in a virtual-hosted environment (and its a pretty anemic system too), 
> and to do it in a timely fashion, then I'm willing to talk to them. But I'm not 
> in a position to pay anyone to do it just now.
> 
> Trust me. Things will improve, only it will be at the speed of "free" and not 
> at the speed of "profit".

True, this does all take time. When I rebuilt the BLU server, I had 
explicitly set aside enough cash for a few months' sabbatical to
work on the project full-time, and I built and tested everything on a 
spare box at home before we acquired the hardware for the new server.

As for consolidating the gnhlug list archives, anyone willing to volunteer 
the time could do this on their home machine, after which a complete mbox 
archive could be kept on hand, ready to import when the server issues 
stabilize
in the future. You could split the effort among several volunteers, perhaps
one volunteer per year of messages, for example.


-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER [EMAIL PROTECTED] / YAHOO abreauj
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

I don't think so. 
The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of 
their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency they 
represent). They hire a management team to do this. 
Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You 
must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not 
very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from 
Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, 
Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both 
costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved 
offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it 
will happen. The same for software development. 
Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.  
On 13 Aug 2002 at 13:31, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
>   And herein lies the stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance of most US
> businesspeople.  This is an INCREDIBLY short sighted point of view.  I'm
> with the CEO of Chick-Fil-A: People and Principles before profits.  The
> profits will come when you have a satisfied workforce that will gladly
> devote themselves to your company.  Many other factors must be in place,
> of course, but this is paramount.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

Many years ago, when I first started working, I worked at a couple of
different union jobs. In at least one case I remember that the union helped
protect workers from dangerous working conditions. There are always people
who when their own life is not at risk, will willing risk yours.

But in general I've always felt that unions are symptomatic of failed
management. If management/owners have a sufficiently cavalier attitude about
the welfare of their workers, then a union will appear. In this case I'd
suggest that high tech folks need to form their own lobbying organizations.
They certainly don't need to be in the form of unions. There are
environmental organizations, it seems to their should be high tech workers
organizations as well - to promote the needs of domestic workers. At one
time the concept of a 'guild' existed.

I do find it interesting that one of the glaring areas where H1-B does not
apply is to lawyering. Perhaps lawyers (and aren't 99% of the politicians
lawyers?) had something to do with that?

-Alex

- Original Message -
From: "Derek D. Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> At some point hitherto, Richard Soule hath spake thusly:
> > Hewitt Tech wrote:
> > [major snipage]
> > > The idea of labor unions (and I know there are plenty of arguments
> > > against them) are heretical to them. Thoughts?
> >
> > Given the discussion, I don't see how labor unions could help in any way
> > whatsoever, and they would certainly be a drag on corporations (Demands
> > that don't reflect reality) and individuals (Tell my why I am paying
> > union dues again?).
>
> I agree...  This discussion was had on BLU recently as well, and the
> only idea that I think came out of that discussion which made sense
> was to have such an organization as a lobbying agency to the
> legistlature.  I do think this makes some sense.  But I'd prefer that
> such an organization had only that as its charter, without all the
> other nonsense I've seen from organized labor.
>
>
> - --
> Derek Martin   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> - -
> I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG!
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> Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu
> Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

Interestingly, the short term solutions, cooking the books, laying off most
of the workforce etc.. often have very negative long-term consequences. I
believe there have been recent Wall Street research that concludes that
companies that lay off employees tend to be 'also rans' after a few years. I
always admired the old HP's stance of having their employees volunteer to
take a pay cut with the expectation that the rewards would be there when
things turned around. This probably doesn't matter when a disruptive
technology is in progress but it seems to me that the real assets of most
high tech  companies are there employees. I suspect once a company has
outsourced most of it's employees, there isn't much left in real terms. They
would be very vulnerable to pressure from the very people that they
outsourced to.

-Alex

P.S. Dell is an interesting example of a company with an inovative
financial/business model but otherwise commodity products.

- Original Message -
From: "Jerry Feldman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Greater New Hampshire LUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


> I don't think so.
> The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of
> their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency
they
> represent). They hire a management team to do this.
> Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You
> must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are
not
> very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from
> Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now,
> Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both
> costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved
> offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service,
it
> will happen. The same for software development.
> Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
> term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.
> On 13 Aug 2002 at 13:31, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> >   And herein lies the stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance of most US
> > businesspeople.  This is an INCREDIBLY short sighted point of view.  I'm
> > with the CEO of Chick-Fil-A: People and Principles before profits.  The
> > profits will come when you have a satisfied workforce that will gladly
> > devote themselves to your company.  Many other factors must be in place,
> > of course, but this is paramount.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Associate Director
> Boston Linux and Unix user group
> http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
> PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
>
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[bscott]

  I find current American culture, in general, has a hard time looking
beyond the immediate.  From people who drive dangerously on the road to save
two minutes of travel time, to people who want instant gratification for
everything, to people who cook the books of major corporations, to those who
exploit the very enviornment we live in, many do not seem to be able to look
to the future.

  (Of course, this is likely not limited to American culture; I simply point
to it because I live in it.  I'm not qualified to speak on the cultures of
other nations.)

-- 
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not |
| necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or  |
| organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.  |

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

My other citizenship is Canadian. There certainly isn't any difference in
this regard. I was up in the Maritimes recently and visited with a
consultancy that wanted to hire me as a kind of sales rep. Their pitch was
"If you need some custom programming, we can do it cheaper because you pay
us in Canadian dollars". Ironically, a friend introduced me to another
business owner who out-sourced all his custom web stuff to an Albanian
custom programming company. They could do it for about $10 US/hour. So on it
goes...

-Alex

P.S. Perhaps we need to think about this in the same terms that we talk
about any other goods that come into the country. If you have an unfair
advantage because in some sense you subsidize the product, in this case
programming skills, you get hit with a tarrif that reflects your lower cost
of operation. This seems a bit strange in this case because we're really
talking about lower cost of living which in the case of for example Indian
programmers versus American (domestic) programmers is purely due to a lower
standard of living. One thing that would have greatly mitigated the H1-B
problem would have been issuing the H1-B visa people green cards. They would
then have a stronger tendency to stay in the U.S. with all the costs that
that implies.

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


>
>   I find current American culture, in general, has a hard time looking
> beyond the immediate.  From people who drive dangerously on the road to
save
> two minutes of travel time, to people who want instant gratification for
> everything, to people who cook the books of major corporations, to those
who
> exploit the very enviornment we live in, many do not seem to be able to
look
> to the future.
>
>   (Of course, this is likely not limited to American culture; I simply
point
> to it because I live in it.  I'm not qualified to speak on the cultures of
> other nations.)
>
> --
> Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
not |
> | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or
|
> | organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.
|
>
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>

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 14:13, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> I don't think so. 

  Forgive me, but I'm really not following your line of reasoning at
all.

> The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of 
> their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency they 
> represent). They hire a management team to do this.

  Perhaps this is the biggest *problem* with US businesses' mindset. 
Growth.  It's all about growth.  That's what killed the dotcoms (in
addition to really stupid ideas).  It's a lot harder to find dividend
paying stocks than it use to be.  In that model, you're not as concerned
about growth (increase in stock price) as you are about profitability. 
A portion of the profits get distributed to the stockholders.

 
> Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You 
> must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not 
> very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from 
> Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, 
> Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both 

  Not really sure what you mean by consumer marketing in this context.

> costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved 
> offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it 
> will happen. The same for software development. 

  Ask yourself *why* customers are not very loyal.  I'm a very loyal
Speakeasy DSL subscriber.  Why?  Customer support that has a clue and
speaks my mother tongue clearly and understands it as well.  Please note
I'm not deriding those who don't speak English or don't speak it
fluently.  I'm deriding companies that make zero effort to be sure that
their support people can communicate clearly in the language of their
customers -- whatever language that may be.
  Part of the reason I ditched my AT&T cable modem service was that
every time I called customer support (which was frequent due to shoddy
connectivity) I got someone who was difficult understand and worse,
could not understand what I was saying no matter how clearly I spoke or
how many times I repeated myself.
  I'd be willing to wager that the Speakeasy crew is paid at least a
little more than the average support crew.  And they will continue to
run a successful business as long as they keep it that way and don't
ship support offshore.
  The problem is that 'significant cost savings WITHOUT ANY REDUCTION IN
SERVICE' (emphasis mine) rarely, if ever happens, regardless of what
some management types preach to their investors.

> Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
> term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.  

  Erh...isn't this kinda what I was saying with my 'short sighted'
remark?  Typically, businesses cut things that help financially in the
short term but hurt in the long term.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

WRT: Unions. IMHO companies get the unions they deserve. 
like a corporation, a union is also an organization, and will act 
accordingly for its own good not necessarily for the employees' good. 
Unions with highly educated members (such as lawyers - yes some lawyers are 
unionized, Air Line Pilots, college faculty) tend to be a bit different 
from the normal blue collar unions because their constituency tend to be 
more realistic, more knowledgable, and less militant. In essence, what a 
union is supposed to be is an official voice of its constituency. 
Work rules (which purportedly protect workers) also may provide barriers.  
In a real case, one place I worked, we could not move a monitor from one 
side of our office to the other. We had to either find a friendly millright 
or put in a work order. Same went for light switches. Most of the lights 
were controlled by switches in switch boxes. Only electricians could touch 
them. (That was before computer controlled lights were common). Normally 
you find these strict work rules when there is an adversarial relationship 
or when there are jurisdictional issues. 
But, it all comes down to the repective unions developing a working 
relationship with management. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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compaq insight manager

[T. Warfield]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Has anyone worked much with Compaq's insight manager for Redhat 7.3? I just 
installed it and am not sure if it's really working the way i think it 
should be (according to their not-so-well-documented readme file)


Thanks
T. Warfield 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wackyfarm.com
Free Leonard Peltier
http://www.freepeltier.org
- --
"...sometimes dreams are wiser than waking..."
  -- Black Elk

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

Yes. As we know everyone is graded on some form of measurable performance. 
Reducing costs in itself can have disasterous long term affects, even if 
books are not cooked. Dell is an interesting study. One reason is that it 
is still run by the founder. Sun is another. In both cases you have a long 
term CEO. A CEO who is in it for the long run will try to make good long 
term decisions, not short term maximize my personal wealth and cut and run. 
Dell is much better positioned to weather the current storm because they 
are trim, have an excellent marketing program. Its competitors were forced 
to make cuts. Downsizing in any business hurts morale, even if the 
downsizing is necessary and done right. 
 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 14:33, Hewitt Tech wrote:

> Interestingly, the short term solutions, cooking the books, laying off most
> of the workforce etc.. often have very negative long-term consequences> -Alex
> 
> P.S. Dell is an interesting example of a company with an inovative
> financial/business model but otherwise commodity products.
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Jerry Feldman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Greater New Hampshire LUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 2:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?
> 
> 
> > I don't think so.
> > The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of
> > their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency
> they
> > represent). They hire a management team to do this.
> > Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You
> > must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are
> not
> > very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from
> > Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now,
> > Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both
> > costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved
> > offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service,
> it
> > will happen. The same for software development.
> > Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
> > term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.
> > On 13 Aug 2002 at 13:31, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> > >   And herein lies the stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance of most US
> > > businesspeople.  This is an INCREDIBLY short sighted point of view.  I'm
> > > with the CEO of Chick-Fil-A: People and Principles before profits.  The
> > > profits will come when you have a satisfied workforce that will gladly
> > > devote themselves to your company.  Many other factors must be in place,
> > > of course, but this is paramount.
> >
> > --
> > Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Associate Director
> > Boston Linux and Unix user group
> > http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
> > PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
> >
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-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

Actually, paying dividends are a very costly thing to do. Profits are used 
to grow the economic value of the company. The stockholders in general want 
growth of the value of their stock, not dividens, which are doubly taxed. 
The bottom line is the "value" of the corporation. The stock price 
essentially reflects this over time. 

Customers tend not to be loyal for the most part. If Speakeasy's service 
deteriorates and there is a better and cheaper alternative, you would be 
quick to switch.  But, more in a commodity situation. If you are in the 
market to buy a laptop, would you buy one out of brand loyalty or would you 
buy the one that best meets your criteria (cost, performance, and possibly 
support). I've dealt with Dell, Compaq and HP PC customer support and I can 
say reliably that they come from the same gene pool. However, I found that 
email Compaq's support actually got me a better answer from India than I 
got from some clueless American from Phoenix. In other words, brand loyalty 
is generally short lived. Once a business starts relying on that, they are 
dead. They need to actively retain their existing customers while 
attracting new customers. 

On 13 Aug 2002 at 14:48, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
>   Forgive me, but I'm really not following your line of reasoning at
> all.
>   Perhaps this is the biggest *problem* with US businesses' mindset. 
> Growth.  It's all about growth.  That's what killed the dotcoms (in
> addition to really stupid ideas).  It's a lot harder to find dividend
> paying stocks than it use to be.  In that model, you're not as concerned
> about growth (increase in stock price) as you are about profitability. 
> A portion of the profits get distributed to the stockholders.
> 
>  
> > Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You 
> > must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not 
> > very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from 
> > Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, 
> > Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both 
> 
>   Not really sure what you mean by consumer marketing in this context.
> 
> > costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved 
> > offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it 
> > will happen. The same for software development. 
> 
>   Ask yourself *why* customers are not very loyal.  I'm a very loyal
> Speakeasy DSL subscriber.  Why?  Customer support that has a clue and
> speaks my mother tongue clearly and understands it as well.  Please note
> I'm not deriding those who don't speak English or don't speak it
> fluently.  I'm deriding companies that make zero effort to be sure that
> their support people can communicate clearly in the language of their
> customers -- whatever language that may be.
>   Part of the reason I ditched my AT&T cable modem service was that
> every time I called customer support (which was frequent due to shoddy
> connectivity) I got someone who was difficult understand and worse,
> could not understand what I was saying no matter how clearly I spoke or
> how many times I repeated myself.
>   I'd be willing to wager that the Speakeasy crew is paid at least a
> little more than the average support crew.  And they will continue to
> run a successful business as long as they keep it that way and don't
> ship support offshore.
>   The problem is that 'significant cost savings WITHOUT ANY REDUCTION IN
> SERVICE' (emphasis mine) rarely, if ever happens, regardless of what
> some management types preach to their investors.
> 
> > Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
> > term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.  
> 
>   Erh...isn't this kinda what I was saying with my 'short sighted'
> remark?  Typically, businesses cut things that help financially in the
> short term but hurt in the long term.
> 
> -- 
> -Paul Iadonisi
>  Senior System Administrator
>  Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
>  Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
>  GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets
> 
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-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

Alex,
I've known you for 14 years and I never knew you were a foreigner :-)
On 13 Aug 2002 at 14:50, Hewitt Tech wrote:

> My other citizenship is Canadian. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 14:13, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> I don't think so. 

  Forgive me, but I'm really not following your line of reasoning at
all.

> The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of 
> their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency they 
> represent). They hire a management team to do this. 

  Perhaps this is the biggest *problem* with US businesses' mindset. 
Growth.  It's all about growth.  That's what killed the dotcoms (in
addition to really stupid ideas).  It's a lot harder to find dividend
paying stocks than it use to be.  In that model, you're not as concerned
about growth (increase in stock price) as you are about profitability. 
A portion of the profits get distributed to the stockholders.

> Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You 
> must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not 
> very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from 
> Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, 
> Dell has a successful marketing edge.

  Not really sure what you mean by consumer marketing in this context.

>  In any case, the CEO must cut both 
> costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved 
> offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it 
> will happen. The same for software development. 

  Ask yourself *why* customers are not very loyal.  I'm a very loyal
Speakeasy DSL subscriber.  Why?  Customer support that has a clue and
speaks my mother tongue clearly and understands it as well.  Please note
I'm not deriding those who don't speak English or don't speak it
fluently.  I'm deriding companies that make zero effort to be sure that
their support people can communicate clearly in the language of their
customers -- whatever language that may be.
  Part of the reason I ditched my AT&T cable modem service was that
every time I called customer support (which was frequent due to shoddy
connectivity) I got someone who was difficult understand and worse,
could not understand what I was saying no matter how clearly I spoke or
how many times I repeated myself.
  I'd be willing to wager that the Speakeasy crew is paid at least a
little more than the average support crew.  And they will continue to
run a successful business as long as they keep it that way and don't
ship support offshore.
  The problem is that 'significant cost savings WITHOUT ANY REDUCTION IN
SERVICE' (emphasis mine) rarely, if ever happens, regardless of what
some management types preach to their investors.

> Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short-
> term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company.  

  Erh...isn't this kinda what I was saying with my 'short sighted'
remark?  Typically, businesses cut things that help financially in the
short term but hurt in the long term.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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Re: multiple GNHLUG archives at mail-archive.com ?

[jbd]

Quoting John Abreau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> True, this does all take time. When I rebuilt the BLU server, I had 
> explicitly set aside enough cash for a few months' sabbatical to
> work on the project full-time, and I built and tested everything on a 
> spare box at home before we acquired the hardware for the new server.

"few months'"! Sigh - All that money/time I saved was sucked up by:

  1. 9 months of unemployment last year.
  2. A house/barn/farm in need of 30 years of repairs.
  3. An unexpected surgery.

At least I had some time to prepare for the conversion to mailman. I wasn't 
prepared for problems after the conversion. (Another sigh.)

> As for consolidating the gnhlug list archives, anyone willing to
> volunteer the time could do this on their home machine, after 
> which a complete mbox archive could be kept on hand, ready to 
> import when the server issues stabilize in the future. You could 
> split the effort among several volunteers, perhaps one volunteer 
> per year of messages, for example.

What an excellent idea! Are there any volunteers? (If so, please reply to the 
gnhlug-org list!)

--Bruce

-
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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 14:33, Hewitt Tech wrote:

[snip]

> This probably doesn't matter when a disruptive
> technology is in progress but it seems to me that the real assets of most
> high tech  companies are there employees.

[snip]

  Absolutely!  I have often said that the absolute most valuable asset
any company has (particularly in tech companies) is an asset it doesn't
own -- its people.  Of course, that's why in this field we're all
coerced into signing employee agreements that give up rights to our own
grey matter.  The big time investors (not all of them, just those who
are clueless about technology) spurred on by their lawyers have to have
*some* way of extracting value from the people that actual *build* the
companies in question so that they can be expendable.
  In reality, ideas have little value without A-player teams to make
them work.  Any VC or private large sum investor who doesn't understand
this, deserves any big losses he incurs as a result.  Read some of
startup.com's principles (if they're still around ;-)).  Startup.com
won't sign NDA's.  Why?  Too many ideas are too similar, no matter how
unique those who have them think they are.  How do you keep all those
ideas separated in your head?  You can't, really.  Startup.com basically
believes that it's the *team* that makes a great company and is what is
needed to make an idea work.  Though startup.com and companies like it
may not be all that 'hot' today, we'd all be better off if at least that
idea caught on a little more in this society.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

I think you are right on here. But, many times economics dictates. 

I don't want to get into an intellectual property discussion, but when you 
work for a company, anything you develop (at least on company time or on 
company property) belongs to the company, not you. The more sticky issue is 
anything you might develop outside the company. Most colleges have very 
strict rules on this for their faculty and reasearchers. 

I've been a consultant/contractor for about 15 years. It is very clear that 
I may have other clients. However as an employee, my primary company may 
(legitimately) have a say on any projects I may have outside the company. 
For one, the company's intellectual property itself is a very valuable 
asset. It stands to reason that they don't want me to use my knowledge in 
another company that could be in competition. 

A few years ago, when I worked for HP as an onsite consultant at Raytheon, 
I also had a part time contract at Polaroid. Most of the Polaroid stuff was 
done at home on my Alpha Linux system. 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 16:35, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> 
>   Absolutely!  I have often said that the absolute most valuable asset
> any company has (particularly in tech companies) is an asset it doesn't
> own -- its people.  
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 17:12, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> I think you are right on here. But, many times economics dictates. 
> 
> I don't want to get into an intellectual property discussion, but when you 
> work for a company, anything you develop (at least on company time or on 
> company property) belongs to the company, not you.

  I don't disagree that this is the way that it is today.  I just argue
that it's simply not right and I seek to correct in any way I can.  Call
me an extremist if you like, but I view programmers (I use the term
loosely to refer to programmers, sysadmins, web designers) as artists. 
The work for hire view is flawed at its core.  Yes I know I'm talking
about thirty plus years of an industry standard mode of working.  But
its thirty years of individual artists being ripped off by
corporations.  Note the parallels to the recording industry.

>   The more sticky issue is 
> anything you might develop outside the company. Most colleges have very 
> strict rules on this for their faculty and reasearchers. 

  From the point of view of what I believe is *right*, it's not sticky
at all.  What I develop on my own time on my own equipment is mine. 
Period.

> I've been a consultant/contractor for about 15 years. It is very clear that 
> I may have other clients. However as an employee, my primary company may 
> (legitimately) have a say on any projects I may have outside the company. 
> For one, the company's intellectual property itself is a very valuable 
> asset. It stands to reason that they don't want me to use my knowledge in 
> another company that could be in competition. 

  I stand by my view that the so called intellectual property has little
value if it is not shared.  It's funny money when 'separated' from the
person who devised it.  And it's usually not unique.  Corporations just
want investors to believe it's unique and then proceed to enforce its
uniqueness through patents and other regimes.

> A few years ago, when I worked for HP as an onsite consultant at Raytheon, 
> I also had a part time contract at Polaroid. Most of the Polaroid stuff was 
> done at home on my Alpha Linux system. 

  I was a full timer at Raytheon for seven years.  For three and a half
of those years, I worked on a really cool build tool that I still
believe is far ahead of the Unix standard 'make'.  And I'm royally
pissed off that I don't have access to that code.  Raytheon isn't using
it anymore and it would have zero impact on the company to release it as
GPLed code.  I'm sure Hell will freeze over before that happens due some
board members imagined view that it has some value to be protected.

  I'm afraid we are just going to have to agree to disagree here.  I've
said on a few occasions that I lean much more into the FSF camp than the
OSI camp.  GPL over BSD.  Free over proprietary.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Hewitt Tech]

It's interesting that employee agreements have evolved somewhat over the
years. The first employee agreement I signed with Digital was pretty much
unenforceable because it was too broad. The one I signed when I came back in
1996 was much more sensible. It basically said "The software you work on for
the company belongs to the company and what you do on your own time is yours
(provided you don't steal your ideas from the company's software). There are
'no compete' contracts that tend to be unenforceable as well. They try to
prevent you from earning a living in your area of expertise for years after
you've left a company. They also don't stand up in court.

-Alex

- Original Message -
From: "Paul Iadonisi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Greater New Hampshire LUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


> On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 14:33, Hewitt Tech wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > This probably doesn't matter when a disruptive
> > technology is in progress but it seems to me that the real assets of
most
> > high tech  companies are there employees.
>
> [snip]
>
>   Absolutely!  I have often said that the absolute most valuable asset
> any company has (particularly in tech companies) is an asset it doesn't
> own -- its people.  Of course, that's why in this field we're all
> coerced into signing employee agreements that give up rights to our own
> grey matter.  The big time investors (not all of them, just those who
> are clueless about technology) spurred on by their lawyers have to have
> *some* way of extracting value from the people that actual *build* the
> companies in question so that they can be expendable.
>   In reality, ideas have little value without A-player teams to make
> them work.  Any VC or private large sum investor who doesn't understand
> this, deserves any big losses he incurs as a result.  Read some of
> startup.com's principles (if they're still around ;-)).  Startup.com
> won't sign NDA's.  Why?  Too many ideas are too similar, no matter how
> unique those who have them think they are.  How do you keep all those
> ideas separated in your head?  You can't, really.  Startup.com basically
> believes that it's the *team* that makes a great company and is what is
> needed to make an idea work.  Though startup.com and companies like it
> may not be all that 'hot' today, we'd all be better off if at least that
> idea caught on a little more in this society.
>
> --
> -Paul Iadonisi
>  Senior System Administrator
>  Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
>  Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
>  GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets
>
> ___
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>

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audio pain - kscd

[Matthew S. Sacks]

Is anybody using kscd (KDE desktop), on a DELL Dimension?
-m

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Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Jerry Feldman]

When I was in graduate school we ran a business game that included schools 
from all over. We had an 8 level TWX and a 5 level baudot code system. 
Ancient history.
Richard Soule wrote:

> 5 level paper tape? or 8?  I used 5 myself.
-- 
--
Gerald Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boston Computer Solutions and Consulting
ICQ#156300 PGP Key ID:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

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Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

I tend to agree Richard. I can debate unions on both sides. They are 
necessary in some  areas and have done some good, but they also can tear 
down an industry,
Richard Soule wrote:

> Given the discussion, I don't see how labor unions could help in any way
> whatsoever, and they would certainly be a drag on corporations (Demands
> that don't reflect reality) and individuals (Tell my why I am paying
> union dues again?).
-- 
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9


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RE: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Bill Mullen]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> While my first computer was an IBM 7044 mainframe (punch card input
> only).  after a few years in the Army playing knob dicker to grunts, I
> worked at Burger King Corporation. The Burger King POS was a 4K PDP8-E.
> No disk, no tape.

And the memories come flooding back ... :)

When I was a sophomore in high school (Melrose, MA, 1971-2), I got my
first taste of computing. The school had four "classic" 110 baud
TeleTypes, paper tape punch/reader and all, connected to an outfit in
Waltham (located in the former Control Data building on Bear Hill Road,
beside 128) called Systems for Educational Time Sharing (SETS). Several
other schools were hooked up to them as well; the only ones I recall now
are Newton North & South, and Canton High (since we could send messages
across the network to each other, I made my first "e-friends" at these
schools). The systems they ran at SETS were a PDP-8/E to do the processing
itself, and a PDP-8/I to handle the I/O. RS-232C disk, "high-speed" paper
tape, those funny little fat DECtape reels, toggles, the works.

The school put two of the teletypes in one of the Math classrooms (where
the lone "Computer Science" class, offered only to seniors and taught by
math teachers who had only taken a brief course on the topic themselves,
was held), and put the other two across the hall in the cramped office of
the Math Dept. head, a woman named Ruth Tentler. Mrs. Tentler was a saint
when it came to putting up with the racket of those horrid machines, as
long as someone was learning something. :)

Melrose was building a new HS at the time, and preparing to turn the old 
one into a junior high, so we were on "double sessions" in the older 
building (grades 10-12 in the mornings, 7-9 in the afternoons). I spent 
every free period down in that office, and hung around there after school 
whenever possible. Mrs. Tentler wangled me an invitation to visit SETS on 
a Saturday, and I got to see the operation from the other end of the wire. 
I sent away to Maynard for a couple of the manuals that I saw down at 
SETS, an "Introduction to Programming" book that IIRC centered on BASIC, 
and a book on PAL III, the assembly language for the PDP-8 series. I 
joined DECUS (I'm fairly certain that at that point, I was the youngest 
member they'd ever had), and set about to teach myself to program.

Before long I was getting the hang of things, and sharing this newfound 
knowledge in the afternoons with those Jr. High kids who also found 
'puters intriguing and spent *their* free periods in the Math office. By 
the end of the year, a couple of them had managed to learn considerably 
more than was even covered at all in the senior-level "official" course, 
which only involved BASIC (and didn't go very far even with that). My 
correspondence with the folks at DEC also got me an invitation to visit 
Maynard and chat with the folks in the Educational Systems Dept. there, 
which was run at the time by a tall fellow named Val Skalabrin (any of you 
long-time DECcers know what became of him?), where I got a glimpse of some 
of the things they were working on there, and gave them my take on things 
from an end-user viewpoint. I remember seeing in one of their brochures a 
tiny version of the 8 that could fit on a desktop, called the PDP-8/A; I 
remarked that if it weren't so God-awful expensive, I'd love to own one of 
those - I seem to recall that they found that concept pretty amusing. :)

Alas, the following year I was in a different school, with no access to a
computer of any sort, and didn't get involved with them again until years
later, when I purchased my first Commodore 64 and discovered CompuServe
and bulletin boards and the like. In those days, CompuServe was run on
DECsystem10 hardware (a.k.a. PDP-10), and once I figured out how to get to
"command mode" and saw my first "OK" prompt, I felt right at home. My old
friends like PIP and systat were right there waiting for me. :)

I have always considered that fact that my first exposure to computing was 
in a multi-user, multi-tasking envronment to have been a tremendous plus, 
as was the fact that documentation on the inner workings of that system 
was readily available. Every kid should have it so lucky, and with the 
help of the Linux community, hopefully more and more of them will. :)

-- 

Bill Mullen
10:27pm, 2002-08-13



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Newbie needs help...

[Brenda A. Bell]

Well... I'm not a total newbie -- my first experience with Unix was on
System3 and I started running a Linux install a couple of years ago.

Enough of that... I just installed qmail, have the basic stuff working
pretty well and having some trouble on some of the fine-grained stuff
like virtual domains and dashextensions.  Question is:  where do people
go for help on qmail?  I tried the Mandrake list but there's not a whole
lot of activity and it's sometimes days before anyone responds.  I've
looked for other lists and/or newsgroups and haven't been able to find
an active one.

I'd be most grateful for some tips on where to look.

Yes... I've read LWQ... 7 or 8 times now :)
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Re: Newbie needs help...

[Bill Mullen]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Brenda A. Bell wrote:

> Enough of that... I just installed qmail, have the basic stuff working
> pretty well and having some trouble on some of the fine-grained stuff
> like virtual domains and dashextensions.  Question is:  where do people
> go for help on qmail?  I tried the Mandrake list but there's not a whole
> lot of activity and it's sometimes days before anyone responds.  I've
> looked for other lists and/or newsgroups and haven't been able to find
> an active one.

Well, if you run Mandrake, you'll be hard pressed to find a better all 
around newsgroup than alt.os.linux.mandrake ... we average 3,200-4,000 
posts a week, and have a very helpful bunch of regulars there; some have 
even moved on to other distros such as Debian or Gentoo, but continue to 
contribute to a.o.l.m. due to the robustness of the community therein.

OTOH, I haven't seen a lot of discussion there regarding qmail, as the MDK
distros all come with both Postfix (the default) and sendmail, so those
are what most people there use; still, it's certainly worth a shot to post
your qmail questions there.

The a.o.l.m. FAQ is at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alex.bache

Have you visited these sites?

http://www.lifewithqmail.org
http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html
http://www.flounder.net/qmail/qmail-howto.html
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/index.phtml/fid/139/
http://www.palomine.net/qmail/relaying.html
http://www.palomine.net/qmail/selectiverelay.html
http://www.nrg4u.com

HTH!

-- 

Bill Mullen
12:47am, 2002-08-14



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