unstrung: tied to nothing but the future
Now most people in the wireless industry haven’t followed the open-source shtick to closely, and with good reason. They’re too busy creating proprietary software that does the exact same thing as seven-hundred other companies and thinking that “Maybe if our widget is a little beter than the other 699, we really will make that 5 billion dollar 2002 revenue projection we put in our business plan!”
Standing on the toes of giants, or something like that.
NDAs and contracts that you should never sign
… clause which forbids you to hire anybody who works for the company that is making you sign the NDA. Presumably, they think that while you are visiting them, you will hire away all their employees and put them out of business. Well, you know what? If your employees are so eager to leave, that’s your problem, not mine. You need to keep your employees loyal by treating them well, not by creating arbitrary obstacles in their career.
So if an employere wants to make sure that their employees don’t end up being the competition make the work enviroment and the work so compelling that employees don’t ever want to leave.
Freeloaders drive up the cost of the system, but I would expect much less so than the current weight of bureaucracy and case workers. Suppose that fully 20% of the U.S. Population had 2.5 free meals a day (at $2 each) and stayed in a $15 motel room. That’s 50 million people times $20/day. A billion dollars/day or $365 billion/year. Congressional Budget Office figures show that our current welfare system cost about $324 billion in 1993. My open-handed system, though, delivers many more services. I’m much happier to pay taxes for the open-handed system because I can see myself as a beneficiary. If I just want to crash for the night when I’m out of town, why spring for a fancy hotel room? If I want a fast meal, why not let Uncle Sam give me back a couple of my tax dollars?
The Gtk-Perl Tutorial, avaliable for download.
MySQL FS (on slashdot), sweet! MySQL Filesystem for a writeup.
David Brin wrote the story for Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future!, a recent addition to my Dreamcast game collection. Pretty cool game so far.
Free Software in the movies, Advogato article and discussion on Antitrust. Saw the movie last night with my co-workers. It was enjoyable seeing the flick in that setting, with lots of geeks. The funny thing is that it was the funniest movie I have seen this year but it was soposed to be a serious drama. Still Antitrust did a better job of portraying geeks and computer tech than most movies. Oh, and the “Open Source” per minute rate in the first half hour is must be incrediably high.
Martin Luther King Jr., Free At Last(.wav).
Martin Luther King Jr. (compassion) is going up on the wall of inspiration in the developer room along with Albert Einstein (intelligence), Bruce Lee (strength) and Homer Simpson (humor).
Luna Law: The Libertarian Vision in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress