Why does everyone hate IT? Same reason everyone hates customer service, call centers, and law enforcement: You usually don't think about them until something's already gone wrong.

It's why I got out of sysadmin jobs. Management hated me because "Well, if they had done their job right, there shouldn't be problems for them to fix" and everyone else in the company was "Doesn't matter if I don't know what I'm doing, they aren't doing it for me. So I'm always going to save them as my excuse for why I had to miss a deadline: 'My system wasn't working and the IT guys couldn't get it working fast enough'"

I stopped reading it a long time ago, but it's why BOFH was funny.

Did you just try to call corporate espionage ethical in the name of "improve your offering to give the customers what they want"?

Kept wanting to do this, but never find time to do a working implementation, so here's an idea if someone wants to run with it.

Use Git for the backend (so everything stays nice and distributed), then write a front-end in perl (or whatever). Store all the data as XML, work out sort of a red/black separation for public and private data. Seems pretty straightforward?

-transiit

I turned the ringer off on my office phone a couple years ago. Nobody's complained yet. Funny how that works.

More to the point, as a software engineer, or code monkey, or code master, whatever, you should be well aware that if it's code you didn't write, don't use it until you're clear as to the ramifications.

I avoid using any example code I see unless I can understand it and there's a clear statement of "Hey, this is example code, by writing this tutorial, we kind of expect you'll be making a derivative of it."

Treating GPL-licensed code (or some open source license) under the same regard is poor thinking. Passing it off that some manager will catch it is worse.

That strikes a little too close to "Sure, I plagiarized my college essays, but I didn't get caught, so I must've done the right thing." Unfortunately, fair use has not been well-defined with source code (or, anything, really), so where you could poke a hole in that analogy with "But I made appropriate reference!" (i.e., telling the person that paid you to do the work), becomes very fuzzy, very fast.

So after reading many years' worth of Microsoft talking about how the GPL is the worst thing ever, I'll give them credit for dealing with this situation appropriately.

Granted, their risk profile of releasing the source for such utility is pretty minimal, but I'll give them credit for going the user-friendly route of complying with the GPL instead of trying to quash all distribution of the tool they were distributing.

It doesn't bring them up high on my measure of regard, but I'll give them the tip of the hat for aiming the right way on this one.

This is an article based on a Raytheon press release. What hardware does said application run on? Even the article suggested there's no established contract yet.

I like the idea that open source/free software is getting more traction in this area, but no platform, no contract suggestes this is just fluff. Whether or not your bullshit meter started twitching that they've been working on this for two years is up to you.

Bonus BS points that they throw in the "Oh, and it could also be a biometric scanner". Feature creep comes early.

Seriously? Magnetricity? That's the best name they could come up with? Really?

I hope if they can't do better figuring out what term to measure in it, they at least pander to the attention it would gather and call the unit "Colbert"

Is that what's called a "flame" these days? How times have changed.

"Th-th-think of it this way."

Wow, you actually typed in your stutter? Really?

And here I was worried that I could play games without an annual contract to pay a telco every month. I mean, yeah, I could get an ipod touch, but wouldn't that be just like getting a DSi? Who would I pay every month? Gosh!

Everyone agrees that flatulence apps are not only worth paying for, they make having the AT&T contract worthwhile. Look how many people play WoW, clearly games are only fun if you're paying month to month, right?

Hopefully the email recipient gets notice before they lose all of their email.

And more hopefully, they find the offending message and forward it to the judge that made this ruling with a note akin to "Thank you for punishing me for having an email address. Here is the poison message, please order your accounts deactivated as well."

Redhat seems to do a pretty steady business with a lot of GPL'd code, and while I don't care for their main product lines, you'd think them being listed on the S&P 500 suggest that they're at least doing something right business-wise.

Just because the standard "let's hide the secret sauce" model doesn't work well in the context of using GPL'd code, doesn't mean that a business can't adapt to it.

It struck me when I read this article at MSNBC

The stock price doubled since the initial rumors? Really...so who stands to benefit from this? Are Sun and IBM execs pals enough to hint at talks (without committing to any deal)

Understanding that IBM has invested quite a bit in java, I can see how they'd like to acquire Sun. However, it's a bit odd that they'd offer a significant premium (unconfirmed) and then bail on the possibility of another company getting to bid. Yeah, I can see how they'd not want to get into a bidding war over this, but I would've thought they'd retracted their offer as soon as a hint of the possibility of acquisition became news/gossip without something legally binding in place. This is IBM, they aren't known for bold initiatives, after all.

Something about this sounds off, regardless of the rest of this article's speculation on who would be a better Sun benefactor.

Your signature suggests a bias. Might look into changing that.

I think what bothers a lot of people is that we were told for many years "Oh, no. We have to have free markets. We must deregulate everything!", and then many decided to take an unethical approach to how they go about their business and it turned out that they might not have been trustworthy after all. In the last days of the previous administration, they reversed course into a "worst of both worlds" scenario: Remove all limitations and then fund them to keep them afloat when their machinations didn't pan out. (I don't know where the new administration is going with this, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that a huge policy swing towards "No more federal aid" might not make as much sense as a gradual approach towards change.)

But, to answer your question, heavily-regulated markets in Europe didn't keep them from investing outside of their local market. We fucked up, and so the impact doesn't stop at our borders, every foreign investor gets to feel the pinch as well.