Slashdot Mirror

Global political attacks on cash (India http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl..., Pakistan http://www.financialexpress.co..., Venezuela https://www.theguardian.com/wo..., Euro http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...) and gold (India gold ownership limits http://www.indianjobs4u.com/go...) and Euro currency (Italian bank bailout worries http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...), US (geopolitical uncertainty from Trump, interest rate hikes http://abcnews.go.com/Business...), brexit (UK in or out of Europe http://www.express.co.uk/news/...) are all bullish for Bitcoin into 2017.

The scientists involved in the launch are praying to many gods to make the launch a success. Why am I feeling assured about the success now? http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indias-mars-mission-the-countdown-begins-for-isros-voyage-to-the-red-planet/1178892

but from a lack of incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive

Incentives? You mean like paying graduates more when you're saying that the market is saturated with them already? How does that make sense?

Yea, the market is so saturated "We need H1-B professionals". Microsoft and other large companies get to hire foreign workers and pay them half what US workers get paid. Boo hoo, without cheap labor they can't rake in billions of dollars.

Falcon

According to Heather Bellini, of UBS AB and the top-ranked software analyst by Institutional Investor magazine all five M$ divisions were behind expectations and most are losers.

every one of Microsoft's five divisions may miss the company's and analysts' sales forecasts. The world's biggest software maker won't be able to cut enough costs to meet profit goals

Things have only gotten worse, which is why Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback advises 10% cuts and others as much as 17%. None of that can save Vista, Zune, IE and other failures.

R K Pachauri thinks this will facilitate more gas guzzling on the roads, though Tatas are quick to reject it.
Suzuki thinks safety concerns would mount
People are also worried if our roads will be congested by these cars.

Walk down any street in India and ask yourself: Why are people in India so poor? They are poor because their culture is extremely self-defeating.

Tell that to all of the farmers in India committing suicide because they can't compeat with all of the heavily subsidized produce from the US and EU. The same thing happens in South Korea and Mexico. People wonder why so many Mexicans come to the US as "illegal aliens". The reason why is US subsidized agriculture products and NAFTA. Because of the subsidies US agribusinesses can export to Mexico and sale it for less than Mexican farmers can grow the food for. This drives Mexican farmers off their farms and they go north to try to cross the border or they go into Mexican cities and those already in the cities are driven north.

Remember, Time-Warner bought AOL and immediately lost 88 Billion dollars.

WRONG!!! AOL bought Time Warner!

Outsource the CEO.

OK, let's look at a Fortune 500 CEO:

F. Duane Ackerman is CEO of BellSouth, holds a B.S. in physics and an M.S. from Rollins College, and earned an MBA from the Sloan Fellows program of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to becoming CEO in 1997, he spent 3 years as COO of BellSouth (a company with $20 billion in revenue).

How many people in India have been COOs of a tech company with $20 billion in revenue?

The largest company in India by revenue is probably Reliance Industries (petrochemicals), which does about $20 billion. So there are probably one or two people in India who have experience operating companies of the size of BellSouth, but those aren't tech companies.

So let's look at the largest tech company in India, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) with revenues of about $4 billion. The CEO of TCS, Ramadorai has a BS in Physics from Delhi University, a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and MS Computer Science from the University of California. Ramadorai, now gets Rs 2.44 crore, or $561,000. It is unclear to me if this includes all possible non-salary compensation or not. I suspect he may hold a lot of stock.

James Q. Crowe is CEO of Level 3 Communications, which has $3.6 billion in revenue. His salary is $375,000, but his stock option profits are $3,750,000.

The CEO pay for top Indian CEOs is going up rapidly though...S Ramadorai' pay went up 100% from 2005 to 2006.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=129698

Last year, PepsiCo ($32 billion revenue) hired Indian-born and -educated Indra Nooyi for CEO. Nooyi was born in Madras and attended business school in Calcutta before completing her studies at Yale. Her salary is $964,413 but total compensation is $9,377,119.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2006/08/pepsi_outsource.html

On the other hand, Indian CEOs may soon need to pay a 35% tax on stock options, so maybe we will see more Indian CEO talent coming to the US:

http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/Corpo rate/Execu_Comp_03-12-07.pdf

When an old article on Slashdot is posted, everyone gets on top of it like white on rice. But when an old article about Linux is posted, it seems to be coined as "another victory..."

This began in August 2006.

The original interview (which the blog has just copy-pasted, inexplicably introducing errors) is here. There is also another interview (another newspaper, another Indian city) here. Both of them are short and say the usual things, and not much info on GPLv3 itself (naturally, as they are newspaper interviews).

From TFA, "The news will further unsettle foreign investors in this state."

Interpretation, spin!

Here is a more balanced and fact-based treatment : http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story. php?content_id=138497

The New York times seems to be trying to stir up "Fear, Anxiety and doubt". The government is not "Communist" but democratic socialist, like the UK's ruling party and much of the EU, Latin America and many other places.

In Kerala, they are replacing one western Operating System (illegal copies of Windows), with another western operating system (legal licences of Linux). After Microsoft went there and demanded lots of money for no source code and no local language support from their dialect, and Richard Stallman went there and offered full source code and a free system that had already been translated into their local dialect.

Why this should panic investors? Cola is after all very bad for you, why should Indians have to become clones of us fat, sugar-high westerners?

Kerala has done very well without help from the western elites and will carry on doing so. FUD or no FUD.

and the earlier party to rule was Congress, a non commie one. They just did not implement it... "The Left Democratic Front government targets implementing an earlier government order that was issued during the previous United Democratic Front regime. The decision was taken in 2004 to push open source systems, but this was not actively followed. Initially, schools were given the option to choose whether teachers were to be trained in Linux systems or Microsoft. The option has now narrowed down to migration." Quoted from the article.. http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=138464

Looks like that
"The government ordered a blackout of around 18 sites for publishing content that was 'anti-national' and 'against public interest'.

Blogging, particularly on fanatic and religious websites, had surged soon after the Mumbai bomb blasts on July 11. Over 25% of India's 38 million internet users are active bloggers. Currently, there are over 120 million bloggers worldwide and multiplying at the rate of about 10 million per month. The number is expected to cross 160 million in 2006. "
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=134366

You know, you'd be taken a lot more seriously if you'd have said this during Clinton's administration when thousands of innocents were slaughtered in Rwanda?

What's your big idea of how to handle Iran, now that they seem dead set on getting nuclear weapons?

Disastrous effects on the economy? I think you need to take an economics class. The economic news has been great. Just an example: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=125531

As for the rest of your diatribe.... We get it. You don't like Bush. You attribute all that is wrong in the world to him. ....Yawn.

You seem to have all the answers. I'd like to hear your ideas. See if you can actually do it without ripping on Bush. I seriously doubt you can.

Take your hate elsewhere.

There are plenty of other more-neutral studies that say basically the same thing.

Late in 2004 some studies were done that were pretty thorough. I know it's kind of old now but I can't imagine things have gotten any better.

A study was done by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance. Some of their findings:

6% of users thought they had a virus currently on their computer. A scan revealed that actually 19% of all the users had viruses.

71% of those with antivirus software thought that it updated weekly or daily. However, a scan revealed that only 33% of all the users had actually updated their antivirus within the last week.

53% thought they had spyware on their computer. A scan revealed that in truth, 80% of all the users had spyware.

References:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/25/HNaolsur vey_1.html
http://www.staysafeonline.info/pdf/NCSA-AOLIn-Home StudyRelease.pdf
http://www.staysafeonline.info/pdf/safety_study_v0 4.pdf

Another study by Dell estimated that nearly 90% of all desktop computers are infected somehow, with 1 out of 5 calls to Dell tech-support being virus/spyware related. Most people aren't even aware that their computers have been compromised:

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=71662
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-4 5-20041015DellsSpywareSurvey.html

And how well could it work on an open platform - like GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. I use two laptops on and off, borrowed from office. They run FreeBSD or RHEL (and are re-imaged on return). I'm still wondering whether I should get a wireless WAN card for India.

Actually, 40 million was a typo; it was supposed to read 30 million.

2.4% penetration, 1.3b people = 30m people. A reference for China's net penetration is here:

"In the case of internet connectivity, South Korea once again comes out with flying colours. Twenty six out of every 100 South Koreans are connected to the world through internet while 12 out of every 100 persons in Malaysia have internet connection. Around 2.4 out of every 100 Chinese have internet access but India again is at the bottom of the list with a net penetration of just 0.4 per 100 persons."

Where's your number of 94 million coming from? Perhaps my ref (from Nov. 2004) was using out-of-date info. And does that 94 million number sync up with the timeframe of the spamming data?

Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecoms equipment maker, plans to set up a manufacturing unit in India in a bid to tap rising demand for communication gear in the country, a company official said on Thursday.

http://www.financialexpress.com/print.php?content_ id=86255

In other words, nearly 100% of of the Microsoft applications running in China is stolen. So, of course, Microsoft and other software companies have severe trouble in using the Chinese market to grow their revenue and profits.

The problem is none a governmental problem. The problem is Chinese culture.

Its not between indians, americans or indonesians or whoever, Its actualy between the workforce (WE) against the corporate(THEM). Probably america is getting hit today. But am sure we(indians) will get hit tomorrow.

check this...
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=50746

http://www.tata.com/tata_engg/media/20030929.htm

Here is a very very short list of American charities that do work that impacts the world. I'm only listing a few to give you a few links. You can find a gazillion others.

http://www.pedaids.org/

http://www.cancerresearch.org/

http://www.children.org/home.asp?sid=98BD1FD2-E8B7 -42F2-B0A7-BC88E745D831

http://www.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/home

http://www.afsc.org/

http://www.accion.org/default.asp

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=49986

You can get a nice list of the top ranked (in terms of money raised being used wisely) charities online

According to American Association of Fundraising Counsel" Americans gave $241 Billion to charity in 2003.

<sarcasm>

That's only ~$1000 per person in the US, which probably does seem a bit niggardly to other countries who like to envision the United States Citizens as fat bloated and heartless. Look at it this way: The average income for a family of 4 in the US is $40k. Giving $4000 for that family is just down right cheap.

</sarcasm>

Certainly if you look at the charts you'll see that Americans did indeed give the Lions share on internal charity, because charity does in fact begin at home, but the amounts spent on international charities, plus the amounts spent for medical research that will eventually benefit the world are hardly insignificant. Donations to save the environment benefit everyone, as does charitable giving in many scientific and medical areas of research.

So, there are some of my figures. If I may turn the tables, you said :The hike in interest rates in the 1980s, caused indirectly by Star Wars expenditure, raised these repayment rates to crippling levels. Would you return the courtesy and post some documentation/facts/figures to back up that statement? I know that the "Star Wars defense was proposed in 1983, and that $60 Billion had been spent on Star Wars in the last 20 years. Yet, if Americans gave away 241 Billion in 1 year, I can't see how 60 billion over 20 years would have caused a hike in interest rates.

I also agree that debts can be crippling, which is why now there are policies established such as the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (run by USAID) call for forgiving foreign debt (at least in South and Cetral America) in return for children's welfare reform. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative also makes sure that countries are able to survive their debt. I would very much like to see Iraq be forgiven the debts that their Dictator amassed in their name, but it seems Iraq's creditors will have their pound of flesh.

You can bet that the bill will be footed from here, and we

You wouldn't trust a public terminal, but you could probably trust a public power supply so you don't need to carry around batteries. People already trust public wifi networks ala Starbucks. CPUs and memory can continue to shrink, but what about keyboards and screens?

Keyboards can be embedded in cloth which could be rolled up. Displays could be made to be rolled up also (1, 2, 3). People are working on non-volatile nanotube-based memories which could replace bulky, fragile hard disks. Cool, zero boot-up time.

It's pretty reasonable to imagine that in five or ten years there could be a cheap computer with the feel and durability of thick cloth, that rolls up to be about 6 inches long and maybe an inch wide. Maybe you velcro it around your forearm when not in use. I'd buy one.

The New York Observer [ugly site], also uses it extensively..

Anyways, check my other post detailing another program in progress in the same city..

The thing that really sucks is that Flash work has started to be outsourced, which is pretty devastating for those of us in other places who use (and make a living from) this medium.

Here's some links about Indian animation outsourcing. Many of them focus on how there's a lack of animators in the country, which aims to be a leader in outsourced animation production:
Padmalaya seeks 400 animators to execute new projects
Color Chips to Hike Headcount to 1,000
The Sky is the Limit!
Trained Talent Eludes Animation Industry

All links are pulled from the excellent animation blog Cartoon Brew

The thing that really sucks is that Flash work has started to be outsourced, which is pretty devastating for those of us in other places who use (and make a living from) this medium.

Here's some links about Indian animation outsourcing. Many of them focus on how there's a lack of animators in the country, which aims to be a leader in outsourced animation production:
Padmalaya seeks 400 animators to execute new projects
Color Chips to Hike Headcount to 1,000
The Sky is the Limit!
Trained Talent Eludes Animation Industry

All links are pulled from the excellent animation blog Cartoon Brew

Diebold HMA to become software-sourcing hub for Diebold Inc

Nitya Varadarajan

Chennai, March 7: Diebold HMA, a joint venture with 50:50 holding between Diebold Inc and HMA Data Systems in Chennai, will be expanding its software development operations for Diebold Inc's operations worldwide ... rest of article

No, actually, piracy is still alive and kicking...

Story 1 (search the page for 'piracy' to see statistics on deaths)
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
Story 5
Story 6
Story 7

Note that most piracy occurs in the South China Sea, and off the coast of Africa, but there is still piracy in the Caribbean, which is very close to U.S. shores.

Just because modern day pirates don't usually have eye patches, and sail in many masted schooners with a black skull-and-crossbones 'Jolly Roger' flag, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just tends to happen more often to pleasure craft than to cargo vessels, like it did centuries ago.

And the Renaissance was well under way and piracy was still common, as the U.S. Marine Corps was formed in 1775 specifically to combat the rampant piracy on vessels travelling to and from America. (Yes, the United States Marine Corps is technically older than the United States of America as a country.)

Another offtopic:

IT Industry Set To Be Linuxed

From the article,

"...any IT company ignoring Linux does so at its own peril....
Quoting the IDC prediction on Linux as the fastest growing operating system in the world, Nasscom points out that India too is waking up to the reality of Linux. The open source movement is making strides in India with the developer community in the country evincing tremendous interest in the Linux platform...."

This has already been happening to some extent in TV for the past few years, but the most glaring example recently is Coca-Cola's sponsorship of a WB show called Young Americans. For $6 million, Coke apparently gets to be a title sponsor, gets a mention everytime Young Americans is advertised (ie "Young Americans brought to you by Coke"), and gets very significant product placement. Survivor had some pretty obvious product-placements over the summer too (Target, Dr. Scholl's, Budweiser, Reebok).