VA Layoff Rumors 189
An anonymous reader noted that Slashdot's Parent Company VA Linux Systems has made an appearance on f'dcompany. I'm sure I'm not the only one who frequents the site, so I won't bother explaining it. The report says that VA is planning a lot of layoffs. Amusingly enough, it also mentions that VA hardware largely powers F'd company. Your guess is as good as mine wrt the truth in this rumor, and what it means if it is.
VA is incredibly overpriced (Score:1)
(1) $700 PC (2) Install Linux (3) Sell for $1800. (Score:1)
I see nothing special about VA's hardware. It's all off the shelf stuff. I can't even opt out of the "support" to save $$$.
Next up: Transmeta! Is anyone buying their stuff? (Score:1)
Re:This is not news (Score:1)
Re:VA Linux is dying (Score:1)
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:1)
How long have you been in IBM? I, together with my teammates from R&D, were layoffed during 90's, because some idiots at that time focused on 'business and consultancy services'(i.e. they don't need no stinking R&D)
It's proven to be a biggest failure. IBM cannot live by offerring services alone.
Well, let's see. According to IBM's 2000 annual report, 37.5% of IBM's revenue last year was from services, and the services share is increasing. In 1992, IBM made $33B in hardware sales and $7B in services. In 2000, IBM made $37B on hardware sales and $33B in services. You can try to argue that IBM would have done better to focus more on software and hardware products and less on services, but you can't hardly claim that the move was a "biggest failure".
Actually, though, it's clear that Lou agrees with you that IBM can't live on services alone: IBM spends over $5B annually on R&D.
When they told you IBM don't layoff they lie. Good luck. :)
Everyone knows that IBM has had layoffs. That wasn't true for many years, but it became true around the time you were dumped and it's a fact of life now. It's a fact of life at every company, and it should be. Even successful companies have to clean house periodically.
As you're squeezing those sour grapes, consider this: According to many long-time IBMers, during the bad years company ended retaining all of the so-so people. The truly lazy and stupid were booted and the really smart and agressive took the money and ran.
Which were you?
Sorry, (Score:1)
you do or don't get an internship.
It was a nice idea that didn't pan out.
Seems like they have more important things on
their minds these days.
Next.
You're all idiots. (Score:2)
If slashdot's so fucking stupid, why the hell are you losers here?
I like slashdot. I've been here as a regular visitor almost from its start. I sincerely wish CmdrTaco, Hemos, Timothy, Michael and everyone else the best of luck whatever happens. They've got a very nice site, despite all the negative comments that have become common around here.
Bill Gates is dying (Score:2)
It is worth considering that you don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Microsoft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for MS because Bill Gates is dying. Things are looking very bad for Gates. As many of us are already aware, Gates continues to weaken as he loses blood. His insatiable appetite has endangered them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers:
Taco Bell states that there are 7000 Microsoft employees dedicated to ordering Taco Bell meals for Gates. How many employees actually write software? Let's see. The number of employees dedicated to their respective tasks is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 software developers. Slashdot claims that about half of their volume are Microsoft posts. Therefore there are only about 700 software developers actually working on projects.
All medical examinations show that Gates' health has steadily declined. Gates is very sick and Microsoft's long term survival prospects are very dim. If Microsoft is to survive at all it will be only fanatical open source zealots left. Gates continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save him at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Bill Gates is dead.
I know one part of VA Linux that is immune... (Score:3)
Those guys gotta be making some serious dough. Getting people hooked on high-dose caffeine products [thinkgeek.com] (I mean, come on! SCHEDULED [thinkgeek.com] deliveries? THAT is GENIUS!)... Free advertising on Slashdot in endless rotation... What do ya figure the gross margin is on that "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" [slashdot.org] shirt that is being advertised right above me as I type this? 50%? 60%?
I bet during the VA Linux heydey, at $300/share, ThinkGeek was seen as some dorky little t-shirt & caffeine selling bastard child. Now I gotta bet the bigwigs at VA Linux [valinux.com] are saying, "Maybe we should dump selling overpriced servers and turn VA Linux into a pure Linux merchandising play, so we can actually make some money!"
Hats off [thinkgeek.com] to the geeks [thinkgeek.com] with a business-model that will actually survive the downturn... I hope you guys spin-off of that cumbersome, bloated beastie [yahoo.com] with the triple-black-diamond ski-slope for a stock chart [yahoo.com]- and go public yourselves in 2002, when the money runs out [yahoo.com] at your parents' place.
I just saw cmdrtaco (Score:4)
Hey Taco!!! (Score:5)
What's ESR surprised by now? (Score:5)
You know, I still own lots of stock in overhyped companies, and when the dot-com crash happened, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I swear, it was worth it just to know that ESR's shit-eating grin has finally vanished -- you know, that one I imagine he had on while writing Surprised By Wealth [linuxtoday.com], the most insanely arrogant, egotistical, boorish, and self-centered brag piece I have ever seen from someone who has money.
Fine, Eric. You made money. Great. Lots of people did. But most people don't go shouting from the rafters "Look at me! I have money! And you can't have any! And I will not give any to charity unless they grovel and beg, but don't do that because then I won't give any to you!"
Whoa, that rant has been building for a while.
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:5)
Apple created something. People then and now loved the product, thought it was insanely great, signed on to Apple's vision and philosophy. And it was Apple's vision, it was Apple's philosophy. They were not only its advocate, but its architect, its visionary.
How do you figure VA Linux has done anything even close to that for Linux? Linux's first kernels were released in, I don't know, 1990 or 1991. VA Linux did not do that. They weren't even in the first round of commercial companies that did things like sell distributions (e.g. SLS). They are a latecomer, and by the time they were founded there were dozens of other companies just like them.
Now, don't get me wrong -- VA Linux is a great company, they are giving back to the community, and in retrospect they have distinguished themselves by being more successful. But there is no way they are the heart and soul of Linux. And the death of VA Linux, the company, will absolutely not mean the death of Linux the OS or movement. That is why there is no rallying cry around them like there was with Apple/Mac; because Apple's death would have meant Mac's death, and here the stakes are nowhere near that high.
Re:Too bad VA didn't do a second offering Like RH (Score:2)
It's interesting comparing strategies - RedHat have carefully purchased the likes of Cygnus (who make money) and given jobs to researchers like Alan Cos who improve the community code RH rely on. They're making money.
VALinux went on an insane spending spree including the likes of Andover, whose portfolio has never turned a cent, and is in deep shit.
The most ironic thing? Who'd a thunk a hardware company would be going broke while a company dealing n free software would make money?
(And $600K may not be much, but it beats having to lay people off. And making money in a dowturn is a good trick.)
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
VA quality problems (Score:2)
Several years ago I argued strongly that they should adopt a business model similar to that of Dell, of putting out large quantities of mostly-identical machines in an assembly line fashion. I also suggested that they needed to broaden their sales and distribution efforts to target new markets for Linux rather than sell to the same old server market. Their response was that their customers didn't want that. But the problem is that VA could never build enough volume with custom computers to get the kind of parts deals needed to be competitive in the business. You just can't survive that way, unless you're content to be a fringe provider of custom computers for people who just absolutely can't accept generic hardware. VA's business model just can't sustain more than a dozen or so employees. I know that for a fact, having been in the hardware business (for a competitor that was bought up by them several years back) and having seen the pressures and limitations first-hand.
-E
Bad memory (Score:2)
Clinton, Bush, Katz (Score:2)
Bush II government (yes, the sequel usually sucks): everybody gets laid off, "Hi mom, my name was in fuckedcompany when I woke up this morning". And what is most amazing is that this government will screw just about everybody, but in 4 years Katz will still be writing reviews for /.
Re:RedHat is profitable (Score:2)
Yikes! That's what I get for getting excited about a press report. $600K is not a whole lot of profit when you have $20 million in one time charges. Still, it looks much better for RedHat than for VA Linux. Their revenues are up, and they are able to partner with Dell, Compaq, and IBM instead of having to compete with them. Plus, RedHat isn't quite as extravagant with their money. Their big ticket purchase was Cygnus (who had a proven track record of actually making money, and a huge pile of gifted hackers). VA Linux, on the other hand, bought into the whole dot com buzz to a much larger extent. Most of their clients were dot coms, and they themselves have spent a substantial amount of money on web properties like Linux.comm, sourcefore, freshmeat, and (of course) slashdot. Until advertisers realize that online ads probably are at least as effective as print ads web properties are going to be hard pressed to make a profit. Even if their sites are popular (and their ads well targetted).
RedHat is profitable (Score:4)
On a much lighter note, it would appear that RedHat, at least, is actually profitable [newsforge.com]. What's more, they are making a profit at a time when everyone else is feeling a definite crunch.
VA Linux's business plan of selling servers to dot coms looked like a pretty good idea when VC funded flowed like a river, but now that times are tight the hardware market is pretty amazingly brutal.
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:5)
It's not slashdot that I fear for, as much as I love it. Heck, my productivity would improve quite a bit without slashdot. I am much more concerned about sourceforge.net. There are a lot of important (and not so important) projects going on at sourceforge. I personally think that the Free Software movement would be dealt a substantial blow if we had to go back to relying on Anonymous FTP at sunsite (er... metalab, er... ibiblio).
I imagine that there is a pretty signficant cost associated with hosting sourceforge.
Re:RedHat is profitable (Score:3)
Yeah yeah... one time charges. By why do they keep making one time charges once per quarter?
Re:What's the good news? (Score:2)
This is the same sort of thing that Bill Parish has been ranting about Microsoft and other companies for quite a while. One legal method of adding up expenses to show Wall Street that you are making money, another legal method to include stuff you've written off to limit the tax liability to the IRS and state govts. Also, are they refusing to give guidance at all or just didn't have good estimates at the time the analysts wanted them?
Re:What's the good news? (Score:2)
Riiight.... (Score:2)
Evidently you've NEVER contacted MS for support or you're high enough on the food chain (i.e. someone like Dell, etc.) to get decent help.
There is no value in a support contract with a company that's going to be around for a while when the support's largely useless to most people.
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:2)
VA Linux has _always_ had great hardware. They do more testing than anyone else. Wonder why their servers are expensive? They use teflon cables, that usually run $100 a piece. Why? Because they NEVER wear out. VA has probably the best-constructed servers on the market, period. All of their servers include EMP, which makes remote-management a cinch. In fact, you can mess with the BIOS at boot-time remotely with EMP. Their 4U boxes also have dual hot-swap power supplies. My company would have bought more VA if they would have only had dual hot-swap power supplies in their 2U boxes (Penguin and Dell both do this).
VA also does extensive testing, finding obscure memory compatibility problems and fixing them _before_ they ship.
I've never seen someone build a 2U VA-like box themselves. Those things are amazing. They always use the best components - that's why they are expensive, and that's why they last forever.
Re:Clinton, Bush, Katz (Score:2)
Anyway, presidents don't matter to the economy. You are better off blaming me for any economic downturn than the president or congress.
ADDENDUM: Actually, a president/congress _can_ hurt the economy, but that is very unlikely. It means that they would have to prevent you from doing business in some way. The only ones who can help the economy is you.
Re:This is not news (Score:2)
New way for /. to make money (serious) (Score:4)
They should offer a premium service -- so much per month or year -- that will let you see the new stories 15 or 30 minutes before they go out to the masses.
I'm not talking about giving anyone an edge in discusions. I wouldn't let people post comments until everyone can see the story.
But it would be cool to be able to get in before the servers sink. I'd pay for it. I think other people would, too.
State of slashdot (Score:2)
This new face of Slashdot is in part the product of the moderation system reducing posting to a game of collecting karma. I've noticed myself drifted towards posting "cute" karma grabbing things instead of communicating what I believe to be important, and I suspect I am not alone.
This post seems on topic enough to me, as both it and the article relate to the direction and nature of Slashdot. But some moderator might disagree and nuke my karma. It would be safer for me to have trolled Cmdrtaco about his name being an omen for his future career or ESR over his inability to avoid boasting during his brief LNUX wealth. The Karma system encourages the behavior it rewards, and it rewards these subtitle superficial trolls. Thoughtful tangents are suppressed so they won't be "offtopic", opinions are radicalized so they will be "insightful", and conclusions are exaggerated so "informative".
This karma system has so well trained us what to post even in the face of dramatic news like this article suggesting LNUX is fucked, most comments are cheese-ball jokes and trolls attacking Linux, Slashdot, or VA Linux. Sad.
Ben
Re:My experience with VA (Score:2)
One thing to learn from this: HR (in any company, not just VA) is the most effective form of firewall known.
_Deirdre
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
Thus, when Eazel closes and Linuxcare, TurboLinux, SuSE and VA Linux downsize (as has happened within the last year), the Linux community is largely unaffected.
When Apple's in trouble, the Mac community is more directly affected.
The downside to the Linux community approach is that people may not realize what corporate difficulties are ultimately costing them in terms of delivery of software, etc.
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
Right. I don't suppose you've read Cathedral and the Bazaar, used Fetchmail, or configured a kernel with CML2? No, I didn't think so. Sorry, but you don't have a fucking clue. The same goes for the 4 moderators who thought you did.
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Re:RedHat is profitable (Score:2)
And scared the crap out of billg, hence the uptick in number of astroturfers, like you, on Slashdot. The beauty of the whole thing is, now you guys have to take the "impossible to build a business on open source" FUD and stick it where the sun don't shine, for at least the next 3 months :-D
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Re:Haha (Score:2)
Ohhh.. who's life would be complete without reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar? I looked over it, about as usefull as your average k5 diatribe. And no, I don't use fetchmail, I don't need it. I know how to configure sendmail. Even I had a use, I still wouldn't. I wouldn't touch code written by those slimy fingers. Its not like I couldn't just write my own. (I've written my own telnet, HTTP, FTP, POP3, IRC and Gnutella clients, as well as an HTTPd server. A fetchmail clone would take me like 4 days) And no, I haven't used CML2 to configure my kernel.
I'm not surprised. You know something about playing with Perl, and to create your impressive resume you used the Perl libraries. In other words I was right on all counts, including the question of whether you have a clue. Your main talent seems to be character assassination. Microsoft needs you, they are looking for Perl programmers and people skilled in character assassination. We don't need you.
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Re:Truth to the rumor (Score:2)
I need that quad xeon server from VA Linux to run NT 4.0.
I've never needed anything like server-class hardware to run linux, and as long as the IT people at work don't support it as a "mission critical system," it'll be relegated to development tasks and serving mp3s.
And, of course, the nice VA Linux boxen purchased by now-long-gone Linux zealots will continue to run NT 4.0.
Re:This is not news (Score:2)
Re:RedHat is profitable (Score:2)
sorry, but that's less than the interest on my checking account. and if i had untold millions to deposit, (they have the cash, they did IPO), i'm pretty sure a 7 or 8% (maybe even 10%, if you loan to the right people) interest rate isn't completely unattainable.
And yes, people are feelinga crunch, but that just means their profits are falling down, only a few of the real (non-dot com) companies are actually losing money, it's just that they're not making as much as they were last year.
give them 3 or 4 more years, if they're around still, then pat them on the back... Right now, they've just burned through millions in cash, and earned less on their sales than if that money was in bonds. not very successful.
Re:Who got fired (Score:2)
Ha ha, but in fact "wrt" is a perfectly good acronym for "With Respect To", although it is usually in caps: WRT. Of all the potential targets, you picked the wrong editorial mistake :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
On the flip side, Red Hat... (Score:2)
Here's the good news: Red Hat is in the black. As in, turned a profit this year. Surprise!
No, seriously! http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44637,00 .html [wired.com]
Quite unpleasant (Score:2)
At least the e-mail is clear about which divisions are being maintained, and which cut back. Many companies act treacherously at times like this.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:My experience with VA (Score:2)
My experience with VA (Score:3)
This summer, being in San Jose anyway and being a stockholder in the company, I wrangled a tour of the corporate HQ there. It was neat...a lot of really nice guys, and father and I (disclaimer: I'm 16) talked to Larry Augustin himself, who broached the possibility of my getting to intern at VA's NYC office (I'm from NJ) this summer.
At LWCE in February, we again talked to Larry, and to some really nice guys from the NY and MA offices, who said that it was a virtual certainty that I'd get the internship, AND that I'd get paid.
About a month ago, new terms: no pay, but internship will work.
Three weeks ago: my contact's boss is blocking the internship
Two weeks ago: my contact says that that hurdle is over
One week ago: Contact says that the head of HR and his pet lawyer are blocking the internship because - get this - they don't have ANY forms or procedures for internships. Which is bullshit, because one of my friends's friends interned there last year.
Now: Still unchanged. I certainly didn't get the 'sure thing' internship, for incredibly petty-seeming reasons. My contact is considering resigning over this debacle, and I can't blame him. It's absolutely absurd that a company so publically committed to OSS ideology would be so petty and closed-minded in its internal procedures...
Re:I just saw cmdrtaco (Score:2)
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Oh, Lord. (Score:2)
Pardon me while I try to keep my dinner down.
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Doubt it (Score:5)
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Also appearing on F*ed company: (Score:2)
Microsoft bought the FSF and has released the new version of the GPL! Thanks to the "upgrade" clause of the GPL, it now applies to any and all GPLed items that Microsoft can find! It reads:
All code and binaries associated with this software belong to Microsoft.
Thank God the FSF is non-profit...
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Re:Maybe if they just stopped wasting money... (Score:2)
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
Sure there was some piling on by VA during what was a heady time for linux, but they put that money into smart, useful places.
Sourceforge is very useful to me, and I would hate to see it go away.
the cruiser? (Score:2)
I like my 95 escort a lot better than that -- if I were to win a cruiser in a contest, I'd sell it immediately (but not disassembled) and put the money into a nice trip to Nepal and an engagement ring for Ms. Right.
Just to clarify things.
timothy
Re:Riiight.... (Score:2)
Even if you consider Microsoft's tech support fairly bad (which I disagree with), I wonder what sort of value you place on, say, 3dfx's support at the moment? Personally I prefer support from a company that exists - however bad - to support from a company that doesn't exist.
Re:Nothing to do with cost of product... (Score:2)
Check your "facts".
Nothing to do with cost of product... (Score:3)
In a world where Linux vendors are selling support and not software, you have to be careful that your support contract is actually worth something. With the present financial climate, I'd place a lot more value on a MSFT support contract than a LNUX one. Nothing to do with the cost of the product - everything to do with the performance of the company.
Re:Hey Taco!!! (Score:2)
Re:I just saw cmdrtaco (Score:5)
JonKatz was there also, but his message was so long he could barely fit it on 8 signs ...
interesting part of this (Score:2)
Why didn't they just focus on selling servers no matter what they were running. VABSD, VANT, nothing else but Linux came out of it. Now when you look at CTO types who know squat but sign those purchase orders, sadly they're likely to be under the impression if it doesn't have a price it's not worthy, meaning Microsoft lurks in their eyes.
Moreso interesting, Linux posted its first profit [crn.com] which sadly is puny on a business aspect. So will VALinux' layoffs shadow Linux as a whole to people who don't know much about OS'
Re:they really need to hire better people (Score:4)
He told me he's in a hurry because a customer was waiting for the answer as we spoke. Out of curiosity I did a /whois on him: valinux.com...
P.S. I know there are more good people in VA then lousy ones, so no hard feeling here okay?
Man that is really not fair. Nobody knows everything. I've been tripped up by silly little things in areas that I would consider myself rather expertish. When a customer did ask him something he couldn't figure out at least he knew where to go get help, #debian would be a good place for help. Most importantly he asked, he didn't brush it off or try and BS his way through it.
I think if more support people knew when to cut out and get more information there would be a lot more happy customer's in the world. This guy finding someone to help him out so he could, in turn, help his customer is a great endorsement for VA in my books.
Re:Revenues (Score:2)
Re:Hey Taco!!! (Score:2)
So, now. Slashdot is lame eh? Well, since you spent the time to read slashdot, then read this story, then post...what does that make you?
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Maybe if they just stopped wasting money... (Score:5)
Re:Interesting (Score:2)
that doesn't mean anything. many companies are hiring at the same time they're doing layoff. sometimes they'll cut a whole department that's not part of their "core strategy" while simultaneously hiring into the departments that are doing well. many times they'll move people's jobs, but sometimes the skillsets just don't match and they have to look elsewhere.
afterall, it's not like "employees" are just carbon-copied workers. you can have some that won't work while still trying to find some that will.
- j
Re:Bye, Taco (offtopic) (Score:2)
Godwin's law may have been a good idea at one time (although I doubt it - 'the act of censorship is always worse than that which is censored.') but it kills many interesting discussions now. Hitler really introduced 'total war' and the blitzkreig. The parallels to Microsoft are astonishing, but I'm not sure I could do the subject justice. Especially because of the inequality of their crimes - economic predation versus mass murder.
At any rate, I'm afraid you can't change the fact that 'grammer nazi' is a natural and evocative phrase. Slang tends to touch on the most powerful things - God, sex and death. The crimes of the Nazis have made their name powerful in metaphor.
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:2)
However, I still don't like SF, and still think the pages are less effective than average open source pages.
And your comment on the lameness filter and suitable uses for the editors' time is apt. I have on occasion spent an hour on a carefully crafted post to explain some abstruse topic, only to be prevented from posting it by the lameness filter.
VA missed the boat (Score:3)
I had a VA workstation at one company. I remember when it first arrived - I turned it on and started X. Someting was wrong. The resolution was (I think) 640x480. This was on a machine with a Matrox card. I've never seen a Sun in low-res mode. I don't even know if they're capable - that's the whole point. From the time you shove the install media into a Sun to the time you throw it in the dumpster due to obsolescence, you only see it in the correct video mode. I have no idea what VA was thinking. If I were a naive purchaser, I would have left the box as it was and been somewhat unhappy with the display. Plenty of Windows users run 800x600 after all. A coworker had a VA box with a CD-RW (factory, of course). It never worked very well. After numerous phone calls, VA said there might be a kernel bug causing the problems, and put the fixed kernel on their servers for download. Which was good. The bad part is that I think they shipped this system not only without testing it, but without ever testing one like it (thus the late discovery of the bug).
VA had all the chances to offer a Macintosh level of integrating and testing. They controlled the OS and hardware. I don't think they delivered.
I should also mention the multi-week lead times for standard workstations. All in all, a bad vendor and the only reason they were used is their support of popular web sites. Which was not very persuasive with management.
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:4)
- It's full of unfinished (unusable) and utterly vaporous projects. It really pisses me off when I'm searching for a solution to a problem to waste minutes on a SourceForge site, sometimes even downloading a tarball and trying to compile, merely to discover I've wasted my time on someone's empty fantasies. You can assert that as the consumer of software I have no right to expect, etc., but I think it's an act of inconsiderate pollution to spread useless software.
- Before SourceForge, project web pages were both more usable and more informative of the character and status of the project. More usable because less cluttered - Open Source project web pages are generally some of the best on the web for clarity. More informative, because a half-baked toy project will get one hastily-written page, if that, while a mature, heavily used project will have many pages and current release news.
- I shudder to think what Microsoft's PR folks could make of SourceForge. If they want to convince an executive that Open Source is ridiculous, they just have to let him browse this site and take in all the 'discussion forums' with two posts, all the ambitious projects with no release info. It's an ongoing embarassment.
Anyhow, for those who love the enhanced functionality of SourceForge, the software is free and can be implemented elsewhere. Hopefully in a post-SourceForge world it will implemented only when a project has outgrown a simple static site.We're in no danger of reverting to UNC FTP archives. (Not that there's much wrong with them.) Pretty much every ISP offers free static hosting to its customers. Then there's angelfire/geocities for the cash and bandwidth impaired.
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
On top of that, how cool was the text adventure based kernel config? Yeah, he's egotistical. Yeah, he gets more publicity than other coders who have done equivalent amounts of work. But I don't think he's done anything worthy of this kind of hatred.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Re:Hey Taco!!! (Score:2)
I wish VA Linux had better management (Score:2)
Basically what I'm saying is no wonder they're losing money, people try to throw cash at them and they don't catch it.
Re:VA missed the boat (Score:3)
Then you've never tried to install Solaris x86. I tried this back in the Solaris 7 days (when they had that "free plus $15 for shipping" offer three or so years ago) and found out that their X servers didn't support any video card manufactured in the (then) past two years, and wouldn't take a "backward compatible" later version from the same manufacturer, either. The only fallback option was 640x480x16 VGA. It was unbelievably ugly. And the only text mode option was 25x80 (unlike Linux, which can give you 60x80 on most VGA cards). It wouldn't even boot with an ATI All In Wonder 98 because the _text_ mode console driver was incompatible with that card!
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:3)
Source Forge [sourceforge.net] and linux.com [linux.com] are the first things that come to my mind, but I know there are many more.
A shutdown or down-sizing of sourceforge would deal quite a blow to many projects.
Haha (Score:2)
Ohhh.. who's life would be complete without reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar? I looked over it, about as usefull as your average k5 diatribe.
And no, I don't use fetchmail, I don't need it. I know how to configure sendmail. Even I had a use, I still wouldn't. I wouldn't touch code written by those slimy fingers. Its not like I couldn't just write my own. (I've written my own telnet, HTTP, FTP, POP3, IRC and Gnutella clients, as well as an HTTPd server. A fetchmail clone would take me like 4 days)
And no, I haven't used CML2 to configure my kernel.
I don't see why choosing not to use the software of an egomaniac disqualifies me to have an opinion about him.
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:5)
But other then that, there is a real difference between Apple and the crop of Linux companies. With the Mac, everything depended on Apple, and really it was Steve Jobs who designed the thing. But these Linux companies are just making money off something that's already popular. VA does give back to the community, but they also take. Slashdot was around long before VA bought them (or rather the company that
The real and fundamental difference is that without apple, there would be no Mac. Without VA, what do we loose? You can buy Linux powered hardware from most of the major players nowadays, and Most of the commercially produced Linux code is coming out of Red Hat.
I think a lot of the animosity generated towards VA is caused by the fact that they tried to be 'the' Linux company, getting the stock symbol "LNUX" and everything, buying all the major Linux sites, that kind of thing.
And of course, employing ESR as their 'corporate conscious' is isn't winning them many brownie points (I hope)
The only thing I can tell from this (Score:2)
Is that FuckedCompany's readers are just like /.'s - Or at least, the contributing ones. The message thread has become a Linux vs. Win2k thread and people are insinuating that others have far less experience than they claim - That they may in fact be a pimple-ridden native of Bumfuck, NW.
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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
Revenues (Score:4)
VA Linux is dying (Score:2)
It is worth considering that you don't need to be a Kreskin to predict VA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: VA Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for VA because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for VA Linux. As many of us are already aware, VA continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Their overpriced hardware is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers:
Slashdot leader Taco states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot (the rest of the accounts are for trolls to mod themselves up). How many users of Plastic are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus Plastic posts on their respective sites is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Plastic users. Geekizoid posts on their site are about half of the volume of Plastic posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Geekizoid. A recent article put Slashdot at about 80 percent of the VA market cap. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 VA Linux users. This is consistent with the number of alpha-stage SourceForge projects.
Due to the troubles of Andover, abysmal sales and so on, they went out of business and were taken over by VA Linux, who sell another troubled OS. Now VA Linux is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among fanatical open source zealots. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
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Truth to the rumor (Score:3)
I believe it is definitely true that VA Linux powers most of FuckedCompany.
Re:the cruiser? (Score:2)
Hey, careful, tim, Anne Marie [educatedescort.com] is certainly a very fine "escort", but I really don't think you should be conisdering marrying her.
Re:Where's the good will? (Score:2)
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:2)
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:2)
VAlinux service is unprofessional (Score:2)
Re:You're all idiots. (Score:2)
That said, part of /. is making fun of Taco, Hemos, et al., so you really can't blame the /bots for taking this fairly grand opportunity to do so.
Re:Hey Taco!!! (Score:3)
This week's poll [slashdot.org] indicates (so far) 2% attendance at Hamburger U.
A forewarning, perhaps?
Re: fp (Score:5)
Where's the good will? (Score:5)
Clearly, one lesson is that having one of your board members write an article bragging about how much money he made on the IPO is unhelpful. But could it also be that the way to build a truly loyal user base is to make something that users think is worth paying for, not by telling one's users that they're heros who are owed the world gift-wrapped on a silver platter?
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
They're not usually wrong. (Score:2)
VALinux being a hardware supplier will of course suffer sales slowdowns with the rest of the market. Those kinds of servers, like VALinux and Penguin Computing make are for websites and NOCs, and so many IT budgets are frozen. So what happens when bastions of freedom suddenly need money? Will slashdot sell out? And by that I mean will we start seeing animercials ala zdnet? Possibly a licensing fee for slash code? Perhaps slashdot can sell moderation points on ebay? Will we need to accompany our link submissions with a 20 dollar processing fee? I'm of course kidding, I'm sure Slashdot's much too respectable for that, but it must be one of the highest trafficked sites that VALinux owns, and possibly on the internet period. Unfortunately it looks that the only company making money off the internet is AOL.
Re:It's not so bad, agreed (Score:3)
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
Re:just waiting for... (Score:2)
In all actuality, though, he could just sell the domain. Remember when he put it up on eBay, and it got up to a few million?
just waiting for... (Score:5)
Plans for saving Slashdot (Score:2)
Maybe we should put some plans together for saving Slashdot, just in case...
Re:the source of the fucking (Score:2)
How long have you been in IBM? I, together with my teammates from R&D, were layoffed during 90's, because some idiots at that time focused on 'business and consultancy services'(i.e. they don't need no stinking R&D)
It's proven to be a biggest failure. IBM cannot live by offerring services alone.
When they told you IBM don't layoff they lie. Good luck.
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Re:they really need to hire better people (Score:2)
I happened to be a VA customers too and I think that'd be funny if I dialed to their technical end up meeting him in #debian asking me questions.
I think if more support people knew when to cut out and get more information there would be a lot more happy customer's in the world. This guy finding someone to help him out so he could, in turn, help his customer is a great endorsement for VA in my books.
I know I'm not being fair to this guy here. Let me explain in general. I've the very old preconception on technical support which I paid a lot of money for. HP were excellent in technical support because their engineers seemed to know everything. When they have complicated problems they will turn to global support repository until a solution comming out. Oracle, on the other hand, would even ask a portion of your code to help you debugging. That's what I mean in technical support. I definitely not refer to something like AOL technical support.
I hang around #debian a lot, and sometime there are some nasty trolls took calls and BS around; and more often you met with some BSD activists bashing Linux whenever people asking question(that's annoying, I know BSD is great, but so what, that's a linux channel. Can't they just shutup if they don't wanna help?). Of course there are lots more helpful and smart people but that's just not the service level a paid customer would expect of.
P.S. Normal commercial grade M1-3 tech support would cost you 5-25% of original purchase. That's quite a lot.
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they really need to hire better people (Score:4)
He told me he's in a hurry because a customer was waiting for the answer as we spoke. Out of curiosity I did a
P.S. I know there are more good people in VA then lousy ones, so no hard feeling here okay?
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Re:the source of the fucking (Score:4)
Even as Linux is gaining ever MORE acceptance, the market is still going down. I'm lucky enough to work for IBM, in Durham, NC, in a job that mostly calls for Linux skills. So far, IBM has not laid anyone off, and is in fact, doing very well.
I HATE seeing this happen to VA. They make a great product. And I fear for what might happen to
Re:Truth to the rumor (Score:2)
The site www.fuckedcompany.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98.
Netcraft just won't do (Score:4)
Interesting (Score:2)
They still have http://www.valinux.com/about/jobs/
out there with bunch of different positions available.
Too bad VA didn't do a second offering Like RH (Score:2)
When Redhat was up for a while, they where able to do a 'second offering'. This allowed them to sell more shares at then current price (I think over $100/sh). Redhat was lucky enough to do this second offering before the bottom fell out of all the Internet/Linux stock and to pocket alot of cash.
Unfortunately for VA, their stock never stayed up long enough for VA to do this. This could have allowed them to have a large stash of cash for these hard-times.
Who's to blame? I'll tell ya! (Score:2)
So although it's sad to see VA Linux get hit hard, it's also reassuring to know that WinTel powerhouses are seeing Linux as an important (but perhaps not yet significant) piece of the action.
The OBV reporter quoted a study which stated that CIOs who support Linux have very high faith in the established companies, but respect the service and reliability of VA Linux. (http://obvreport.com/ [cnet.com] references a copy of the report - is the original off-line? Someone follow up if you can find the original!)
It's too bad that everyone can't survive. But given the strong market forces of both WinTel, Linux and MacOS, this should NOT be a surprise - even to the VCs!