PDP era and a question

From: Richard W. Schauer <rws_at_enteract.com>
Date: Sat Aug 28 23:02:05 1999

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:

> please see my embedded comments below.

Would it not be easier to simply delete the superfluous quoted lines,
rather than re-send the whole thing? (I assume, perhaps wrongly, that
you're using some glass tty. If you're using a actual hardcopy terminal,
I take back what I said. This is classiccmp, after all.)

A few snippets of your past messages (I hope I haven't impaired the
meaning of any by taking it out of context):

> field the last batch of "enhancements." Their perception is that too much
> detail about the parts' configuration details is too much detail about the

> >> Well, it's not likely that you'll encounter much cooperation in your
> effort
> >> to convince the world to share its secrets. These days, when patents are
> of

> >> Nevertheless, perhaps you need to back away from your devotion to the
> >> absolute notion of fully open source in favor of a really efficient,
> >> particularly cost-efficient, PDP whatever you want to build. If you need

> You'd only do that if you intended to make your version better, faster, and
> less costly, along with less trouble to repair.

> >> noone else is able to fix it either. Sometimes it's necessary to live
> with
> >> those "bugs" which annoy you most.

> Perhaps that has more than anything else to do with your inability to find
> work. If you're so prone to get caught up in "fixing" what others don't
> even perceive to be broken, that you can't work with those tools, perhaps
> it's your outlook that needs fixing. In any case, perhaps a look in your
> own closet is warranted. I know I wouldn't hire someone who was not at all
> concerned about protecting intellectual property I had bought and paid for
> and who felt that it was more important to make a board easy to clone that
> it was to make it lower in cost and more reliable. Don't you think your
> outlook has some questionable perspective issues?
>
> If you're an engineer, your job is to solve the problems which confront you
> today with the resources at your disposal today, and not to lament the fact
> that someone built the XYZ round instead of square so it would stack neatly,
> and not to dream up technology which isn't yet commercially viable. Today's
> software isn't bug free, nor is it "open" enough to suit you. That is
> what's on the table, though. Refusing to use current hardware/software
> because it's not "open" enough isn't going to put a roast on the dinner
> table next Sunday, either.

> out there, you'll be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. (You'll also
> develop different priorities where intellectual property is concerned!)

The above missives show some important points about you, such as:

- You support the "strict union" mentality ("I was hired to do this job,
and this is the only job I'll do. Even if it would save my employer and
our customer time and money if I moved a wastebasket over 3 feet so the
next load of widgets could come in, I am a widget-repairman, not a
wastebasket-mover. The wastebasket-mover has to make a living too. Oh
well, time to sit back and wait 3 hours for him to arrive.") To all of
those who belong to a union as a matter of course and who do NOT act
like that, I am not referring to you.

- You believe that making money doing something you don't like is
inherently better than doing something you like and not making money. Or,
more broadly, money must rule the world and all its constituents.

- You believe that people's "need to know" information must be tightly
regulated, and that bad things come about when people get information they
don't "need" to have. Sure, when these people are your competitors, you
don't want them to have it, but stealing is stealing- if they end up
stealing your product, they've broken the law.

- You think that newer designs are necessarily better than older ones,
newer hardware/older, newer OS's/older, etc. At work, my
(company-provided) computer was changed from Windows 95 to 98 to 2000
recently. This involved some downtime, so I asked why this upgrade was needed.
The answer was an impatient, indignant "because it's newer". It worked
perfectly fine before and the only reason you're 'upgrading' it is
something new came out? "right." 2000 kept crashing and was about 3
times slower than 98, so I convinced them (with great difficulty) to
change it back.

- You think in any disagreement, only one person can possibly be right,
and you're not wrong.

Now, people like you who possess the first four make the world diverse,
but the last one is what makes arguing with you like arguing with a brick
wall.

If anything I've said about you is completely untrue, tell me and I'll be
glad to retract it and apologize for it. Otherwise, I think I've got you
figured out; I work with someone like you. Thank God he's quitting in a
month when his contract is up.

Richard Schauer
rws_at_enteract.com
Received on Sat Aug 28 1999 - 23:02:05 BST