http://linuxrouter.org/

The Linux Router Project – who cares? Technology gods from the hardware and software worlds exist in many forms. Can all the gods be fulfilled and appeased? Should they? Many things may be conceived in the minds of men but why should they all become reality?

As my friend with a degree in marketing from U.C. Berkeley said, “It does not matter what you know. If it does not sell it has no value”!

What should this poor programmer do? How about getting a real job! How about getting a life? This type of thinking is just a way to cry and ask for sympathy. Poor me, I could have saved the world with my vast knowledge and abilities that no one else’s possesses. Alas, no one would fund my dreams to make the world a better place!

Here is a true story from about 30 years ago. Two new hardware engineers right out of college were hired by JPL in Pasadena, California. They reported to their manager who had no idea what to assign them to do. So the manager said to the two men, “Write a report about how to create a tunnel to the moon and report back in six months”!

Six months to the day the two engineers came back to the manager who had forgotten about them and what he requested.

The men gave a full detailed report, which included telescoping elements to compensate for the varying distance between the earth and the moon. The manager did not know what to think of all this.

When you have a lot of money in your budget, pressure, projects to deliver and schedules to keep you may forget about two new engineers. The engineers were ambitious and applied what they had learned in college along with their creative abilities to solve a problem. At what cost? Where would the materials come from? What was the social value of the project?

People with technical abilities may or may not change the world. It does not matter. The real art is to survive.

Tom