Slashdot Mirror
Evangelizing OSS in the Caribbean
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an article on NewsForge regarding evangelizing OSS in the Caribbean. I'm wondering what others think of the impact efforts like this may have on software development jobs in the US. Is IT still a viable field to get into and if so will it last?"
I've got the perfect theme song: "No Windows, No Cry"
pasty-faced nerds roaming the streets of Kingston. I give 'em 5 minutes before they're robbed and hacked up with machetes.
If they can't afford office they sure as heck can't afford joint developent of free code with U.S. programmers.
I am not be any means an expert but I would think programming would be a job that long term would not be worth doing, just like "technical support" and a host of other services in the IT field aren't worht doing.
As the software becomes more "autonomous" there is less need for the people, I give you my job at one of the major hardware companies.
After windows XP was released there were so few problems that it was a major factor in the decision to reduce local support staff, other factors being Americans want to much money for the same work that overseas peeps will do for what is regarded a paltry sum here.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The commercial, and particularly the retail, software industry is in big trouble from open source software. As software becomes a commodity, producing it will become less and less valuable to employers. Oddly, it still costs lots of money to create professional, polished consumer software, but the usually weak open source imitations are "good enough" for most people, or will be fairly soon. The real question is what happens when companies stop doing the basic research and innovation that open source developers rely on for ideas to copy?
Hmmm... looks like even the troll is getting bored of his trolling.
Information Technology will be a neccessary feild for as long as humans need to store information -- viable, you ask? Well, as software users increase, brains to upkeep their databases, troubleshoot, and otherwise code their software, will become more and more valuable. In other words, if you know how to REALLY use a computer, your job is important, thus viable.
Regardless how you present it, it still stinks the same -OSS/FS monopoly. You hate MS?, do what MS does but under a different name. You hate corps, deal instead with Linux kernel hackers that are directed by big corps (Cox & Co). You fancy freeriding and you rights being the only ones ever to be respected, EFF will welcome you. And if you can touch the big corps, get after the small guy and play it ala MS.
Can just see the history books...
...but, that's just a pipe dream at the here and now.
"Today class, we will be discussing the Great Unixing and the Enlinuxment prompting the Great Schism within and subsequent dissolving of the Microsoft Corporate Church..."
.unsigged
Of course IT is still a viable field to get into. Though the current market isn't great within a few years we will probably be hearing cries of, "We need more IT people. After the dot-com bust and the overseas outsourcing crunch of the early part of the decade not nearly enough college students pursued IT degrees."
If Darwin was right, you'd be dead by now.
Jah, mon! We got the bobsled team feelin' irie after jammin' on tuxracer a few times.
Besides, mon, lemme tell you -- after they said that Linux had superior rastability, we were sold.
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds." (Redemption Song)
Pirates of the caribbean?
Well with just OSS, how could they have made that movie?
The hard part is in putting the hardware, software, and people together to make it all work. On time. Within budget. To expectations. That will be a rare skill for a long, long time to come, and it has nothing to do with coding.
The fact that Free Software is gaining in popularity is a Good Thing (tm). Yes, it will lead to lower wages and perhaps fewer jobs, but society as a whole will benefit.
This type of evangelizing of software is ILLEGAL. If you evangelize software YOU MUST PURCHASE SAID SOFTWARE. We are going to see that this website is taken down immediately. We will log IP addresses of anyone who visits this site and we WILL find you and prosecute you to the maximum extent permissible under the LAW.
Now the RIAA will start a campain against the OSS pirates in the Caribbeab.... oh, wait....
Joining them high on the list of those who will pay are Linux nerds. SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY. I'm glad you find solace for the ravages of your lonely and hollow life in a fucking free operating system but if you tell me to install it I will break off your fingers and feed them down your throat with the latest distro of Redhat stuck to a plunger. I don't really care all that much about my operating system as long as it fucking works, you want to know why? It's the equivalent of a goddamn table. This is the surface I do my work on, and I don't need some weird Swiss ergonomic table that's at an angle because all of my cans of pop will slide off of it. I'm glad that you think using one of ten thousand different Linux versions gives you some moral high ground to speak down to me from, because fuck knows I might as well be sodomizing preschoolers by using Windows XP and I NEEDED TO KNOW THAT. Die in fire you hyperactive hot-headed dip shits.
Traumatized By Goatse
You say "goatse," my friend.
I say "goatse," my friend.
I thought the fun would never end,
'til you showed that site to me...
Traumatized by Goatse.cx.
Traumatized by all the things you said, now.
Traumatized by Goatse.cx.
Traumatized by all the things you said to me.
There's something awful in my tea.
You say "goatse," my friend.
I thought the world would never end.
I thought the fun would never end,
'til you gave that address to me...
www.Request-A-Song.com
(C) 2003 Hollow Earth Productions
The current worlwide economic crisis it's just a shockwave, created by the explosion of the 90's irresponsible and stupidily greedy ".com" economic bubble. Like all things it will eventually pass away.
Japan was the spearhead of this crisis in the late 80's. One would think that economists, having studied the Japanese downfall would have warned against rapid and unchecked growth but no, they had to wait until the virtual walls started to fall apart on them.
Leaving the economy aside, the IT industry is one of the most viables to work in. Specially when you work work with Free/OS software, which I see as a Golem (built from mud, shape shifting and undestructible).
The IT industry certainly is dying in the US. A few obvious factors are to blame:
1) Y2K came and went. The years-long retro-fit and build-up and hype pushed IT budgets unnaturally and unsustainably high. Y2K gone, budgets gone. So if you were involved in a big corporate build out to replace a legacy system before the sky fell in, you're not doing that anymore.
2) At the same time, the dot-com bubble pushed IT even higher. Everyone needed a shiny Sun server in the backroom, if not eight, and an ecommerce site, etc. Not anymore. So if polishing that Sun server was your job, well, you don't have it anymore.
3) The improved stability of Win2K and WinXP really has reduced the need for IT helpdesk staffing at many companies. Hard as it may be for the Slashdot crowd to believe, that's true. So if asking the Dilbert in building 19 "Have you tried rebooting?" was your job, well, probably not anymore.
4) The retail software industry is near dead, outside of games and a few productivity areas like photos. People just aren't spending their dollars on that software anymore. So if you are a consumer application developer, you're probably unemployed.
5) And of course, general macro economic conditions suck right now, so "do more with less" is the mantra. And even "do less with less" can be acceptable.
There are more reasons, of course, those are just the top 5 as I see it. And OSS certainly isn't going to save IT in the US. There is nothing in OSS that really affects those 5 items above.
Similarily, there is no point to get into the computer industry at all. I forsee that the entire world will need no more than 4 computers total !
IANAEconomist, but I doubt that any of the US economy is going to last.
Forget long-term sustainablity issues, and just notice the increasing flood of companies moving manufacturing offshore to cut their costs. Certainly a smart move if all else were equal, but as more and more companies do it there's going to be less and less money to go around for the American worker, and as the total worker income drops the total consumer spending will drop as well.
And consumer spending amounts to almost 2/3 of the US economy. Expect a viscious cycle until the US economy stabilizes on a new equilibrium, with few US citizens able to participate in our traditional profligate lifestyle.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There will always be a business need for programmers to glue software together and create things that nobody else sells or builds.
For example, the IRS changes their reporting requirements every now and then. I don't know of any company that would risk an OSS bug in that kind of software.
There will always be a need for people who can do software upgrades and systems work. A lot of that can't be sent out of the states because of the cost of shipping the computers around.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
My family is from T&T (although I was born in Canada) so let me clarify a few things:
It's more than 2 islands. There are a lot of little islands too but the 2 main ones are Trinidad and Tobago. They used to be separate countries but were amalgamated by the British (who valued them for the cane fields) for administrative simplicity.
T&T has 2 major exports, not one: Oil and drugs. Seriously. The US suppliers take their yhats down from Florida and sail into Tobago beaches. This is where they load up on that which was produced in South America, particularly Colombia. The other main industry is tourism which is obviously not a cash export.
But the author is right about oil being critical to the economy. The main reason my family is well off is that my father's father worked for the oil companies for 35 years earning far above average wages. Keep in mind that T&T is a 3rd world country and you see poverty over there like you never see in north america, not even in the First Nations' areas of Canada.
" Too often, when we hear the phrase, "developing country," it's used as a euphemism for, "poverty-stricken nation whose most obvious features are poorly-maintained roads, tin-roofed shacks, bad plumbing, and unreliable electricity.""
There is a lot of poverty. There are a whole lot of VERY VERY wealthy people as well. I expect that the relative number of wealthy and poor people to middle class folks is higher than in the USA.
The highways and roads in cities are well maintained. If you get out into rural areas in the jungle and such, it is to be expected that you will dodge potholes that your car could fall into. And when driving on mountain roads, you've gotta watch out for sections that have fallen into the sea.
As to housing, there is a lot of nice housing, and there are a lot of poor shacks as well.
The electricity is more reliable than you'd think. But the level of people connecting things illegally to the power lines is high. This makes being a power linesman quite dangerous because you can get killed when the power is officially shut down and someone's illegally and improperly connected device fries you.
Hopefully the OSS revolution will help rid the world of the indignity caused by cruise ships filled with passengers buying trinkets.
As for the question of IT jobs. The software developing jobs will gradually fade into memory, but there is still a need for having IT skills, and there will continue to be jobs for network admins, data entry and report writers, etc.
The main goal of OSS is simply to end the idea of software development as a business. Software development is only one piece of the pie.
But back to third world evangelizing. Most US software companies have found out that they cannot afford serious OSS development. When the flaws of the revolution become apparent, it is natural to move to the third world.
The question is whether or not the natives have caught on to the double edge sword. Preaching free software and creating a world where software is only taken and not traded, then the third world nimrods who fall for the propaganda will find their software development skills worth less than the local trinket makers.
In someways I see this little Stalin-wannabe iconoclast preaching in the third world as the ultimate act of contempt. Giving your work away for free doesn't work in the first world. So you preach to the peasantry of the glories of the revolution to the third world.
It is a fun example of history repeating itself. The fearless leader preaches the glories of revolution to the peasantry knowing full well that the dictatorship of the prolitariat intends to pave the roads of their paradise with the blood of their followers.
Not only that, OpenOffice and other Open Source programs can be customized and modified at will -- by local programmers instead of by companies overseas
But one of the reasons MS is achieved so much success is because they made their stuff very easy to extend a long time ago, witness the gazillions of VB coders out there who use MS components in their apps, for example its a doddle to stick another button on to IE and code whatever you want behind it in C++ or VB taking advantage of almost all MS office functionality/disfunctionality depending on your point of view. Jesus the number of people I have seen working in major corps who depend on their self built spreadsheets to get anything done alone defies belief.
I always find this a very disingenuous argument for OSS as it implies MS software cannot be customized when it obviously can. Yes you dont have the source code but the occasions where the OS source is required are few and far between for application developers.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
... a viable field to get into and if so will it last?
Why would we not expect IT to be a valuable field to get into until:
- the Meteor hits
- the second coming of Jesus and (Arnie-unrelated) Judgment Day (although any "heaven" [HIE'CIA] without computers is IMO misnamed)?
- the current Administration starts ramping up the DMCA (at which point we all go underground anyway?)
- Rob Enderle becomes a government advisor for Information Technology?
- Slashdot itself falls victim to the Slashdot effect?
- dammit to hell they blew it all up and the damn dirty stinking apes don't use computers?
Is IT still a viable field to get into and if so will it last?
No. Absolutely not.
Alice spends 40 hours a week at work developing databases, and 40 hours a week working on OpenOffice.
Bob spends 40 hours a week at work writing an office suite, and 40 hours a week working on PostgreSQL.
I will use Alice's office suite, and Bob's database.
Think hard: Did you all expect your open source project to put everyone else out of a job but not you?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
That or...
You are a complete racist yourself and have absolutely no talent to speak regarding this field, filling your meaningless life by finding faults in things just because you couldn't get a break (or figure out how to get a break). Could it be that there are no negroes (I will not use that politically-correct term) in that list because, could it be, none of them have reached that level of skill or aren't interested in it? I bet if there was an all-negro software company of equal caliber, you wouldn't care, and criticize those that say they are racist.
Anyways, enough rant... racists just get on my nerves.
Basic programming jobs will leave the US. As applications get more complex there is less incentive to hire local programmers to do basic code work. I can hire foreigners to do the grunt work or use OSS toolkits/libraries to save money. I can then put that money into my core business which is marketing. Everyone that works at a software hous knows that marketing runs the show.
... In 2003 I took a promotion from Dir of Corp. Security to Dir of Production Operations and was laid off several months later after increasing uptime and everything else. Did I know that I would probably loose my job by taking the promotion? Yup! As a start-up on the decline I realised my director of sec. position was irrelevant so I angled for the Dir of Ops job which was very relevant to the company. I got the job and made improvements which benefited the company and I probably expended my employemt by over a year. Because I took the initiative to provide a service that my company needed I made out pretty well in the severance area.
Th US has always exported jobs. I started in IT in 1989 as an IT Manager and have avoided the development and engineering jobs like the plauge because they where being outsourced. In 1994 I changed my focus from IT Managment to security because better network management tools had arrived an made it easier to outsource IT Management. Through the 90s I watched my IT friends getting laid off as the companies they worked for outsource management to IBM, Exodus, C&W,
It's up to me to make my self relevant to US employers and I have found that the easiest way is through being in management (though the politics are a bitch). You can't make an impact or change the world if you are locked in cube coding our trapped behind 15 miles of cable in a server room.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
and oil is its major cash export. That oil is expected to last, at most, another 35 years.
I disagree. They were report that all oil in People Republic Of China would run out 'by 2002' and this was back in the 1970s!
I know there are ecnomical studies in 1970s in America with similar awful predictions for oil and coal reserve worldwide from place to place and yet no one has run out of oil gas coal yet.
These predicts only predict on what current reserve exist but new oil gas coal holes are found all of the time. I severe doubt Trindidad And Tobago will run out of oil in 35 year.
-- Dr. Fu Ling-Yu, Internal Technology Consult; Tongji University, People Republic of China.
What an odd title for a movie review...Equating OSS and Pirates doesn't help the cause ya know. The weirdest thing is that the review doesn't even mention Johnny Depp. What's up with that?!?
I have an ENTIRE CADRE of armed ATTACK PENGUINS with FREAKING LASERS on their heads. DO YOUR WORST!
Quite the opposite experience for me. After I compiled my own kernel, this thing boots and runs like greased lightning compared to windows running on the other partition. In fact, I've only booted to windows *once* since I started "dual booting" and that was to burn a CD, and ONLY because I didn't have time to set up CD burner software under Linux. On the kernel that came with my distro, everything runs about the same speed as windows. NOTHING that I've used runs slower than in Windows.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
The rebuttal from Peruean congressman Edgar Villanueva (http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html) does have some very good arguments for Open Source :
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
from the article
"oil is its major cash export. That oil is expected to last, at most, another 35 years. After that, how is TT going to pay foreign companies for software licenses?"
was this some sort of a joke or was it just a demonstration of blatent ignorance ?
I think when a country loses its number export product especially one such as oil i think the last fucking thing they are gonna care about is wether they can pay for software licenses.
good to see you have the priorities in the right order
dicks
yeah now mod me on my comment not my username
In fact, I've only booted to windows *once* since I started "dual booting" and that was to burn a CD ... blah .. blah .... blah..
suuure... we believe you.
Commoditise all the building blocks you want. Operating systems? Fine. Office applications? Yep - alright. Development tools? Yes please, we like that. When you're finished, you still left with a ton of tools that need plugging together to do useful work for a business.
Now, if your business just needs Office to write letters and send invoices, plus a database to track stock, then you were never in the kind of software market I'm talking about anyway. If, however, you happen to be a multi-national bank needing realtime market data information feeding to custom databases, with their own trading front ends etc. - this kind of stuff is only helped by Open Source. Give us the middleware (in this set-up, the OS and database is almost immaterial) and we'll carry on building the final product thank you. Always plenty of work for developers here.
Cheers,
Ian
Dude, you obviously have a hardware defect on the Linux box. No software can fix a broken hard drive.
I hope you are getting paid by the hour...
...Guybrush Threepwood.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I'd say a future is possible if the goverment would be able to create a climate in which people can work without fear.
The current problems are in patent laws, inegality of rich vs poor in the court (sorry rich just can afford the trials longer and OS can barely defend itself). It seems these days laws are no longer about assuring a fair and honest climate in business but rather the protection of a few precious giants which have become fat and lazy from it. Look at phone services, record companies (distributors refusing to distribute as the consumer wants to buy), copyright extension laws (which go well beyond giving the authors a chance to take advantage of their work).
That, and some kind of insane fear of aliens and not the ones from outer space. I would say these are the biggest challenges to the united states in a rapidly more united (networked) world.
Of course it's not all bad, the US is still number one, it's just a matter of making the world doesn't pass by.
Most programmers don't work writing software that is sold. They do software development that helps a company's business procedures. OSS will only kill off-the-shelf software (Office, Oracle, Windows, ... etc). It won't kill development of proprietary internal software that is never seen by anybody outside the company. Sit back programmers, you'll be fine.
That is the worst song I've ever heard. It was worse than actually looking at the picture.
You are copying the same text over and over again. For what?
Which Linux distribution are you running?
I've run various versions of Red Hat Linux from 5.2 to 9.0 and never had any speed problems at all.
On the other hand, I've also run SuSE Linux and it was painfully slow.
I'd say that on a 233 MHz computer, Red Hat Linux is quite acceptable and SuSE Linux is not.
OMFG! Tell me... how cool is that?
Awesome!
for people who are passionate about it. For the "this looks like a good way to make a quick buck" brigade, I think the game is up...
Seriously, I've been through a couple of IT recessions, and it's never pretty. If you're good, care about your work and want to work hard, there are still plenty of opportunities. If you're into IT because it's well paid and involves no heavy lifting, you'll find it hard to get by untill the next boom (I've been through a couple of booms, as well). And in the confusion, lots of good people get laid off, and lots of clowns stay around - it's not fair, not clean and good people get screwed.
So, right now, IT is like most other jobs - if you're good, enjoy the work, and have people-skills, you'll probably be okay. If all you want is a fat paycheck in return for an MCSE, bad attitude and the ability to use TLAs without blushing, no, IT is pretty terrible right now...
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
-aaaaa--a-----a----a-------a----
a-----a-aa----a---a-a-----a-a---
a-------a-a---a--a---a---a---a--
a--aaaa-a--a--a-a-----a-a-----a-
a-----a-a---a-a-aaaaaaa-aaaaaaa-
a-----a-a----aa-a-----a-a-----a-
-aaaaa--a-----a-a-----a-a-----a-
Wow, I think you have set a new record with the "freelance gig" bit.
To all other replies: YHBT YHL HAND
Being part of the global network of Arab activists should matter why?
...on the left hand side!
Actually, there are intelligent, compelling arguments for using open-sourced software over commercial even if you proceed from the assumpton that it's always slower, unstable and somehow more expensive.
Here's one of many places you could go to find some.
I'm not going to bother pointing out why I think your experience with Linux vs. Windows is atypical. I will, however, challenge you to defend the subject line of your post.
My wifes family moved to from Jamacia to the US when she was 3. a few years ago we went to Jamacia and she was upset to see how poor the country was compaired to the US. The fact is as with most Caribbean nations more Jamaicans live outside Jamaica than live there. This is due to a lack of oppurtunity at home. If the people in these nations have more access to OSS or any technology it's a very good thing. They have more oppurtunity for education and we get more skilled immigrants.
The US is an immigrant nation and for the past few years population growth in the US is being fueled by immigration because fewer US citizens are having kids. It only makes sense to outsource our our needs to countries with high migration rates to the US. South America and Asia. That way we increase our skilled population base.
People like to attribute this to evil globalism or money grubbing multinationals but it's simple. If we don't have generations of skilled workers in this country it will cease to exist.This is not a bad thing for the US.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Yes. But in the future it won't be enough to merely understand how computers work in order to make it in the IT field. You will need to understand how an IT department fits within the overall structure of an organization and how to meet the requirements of your internal customers. You will also need to understand how to scale your IT services within the organization. There are entirely too many bad system administrators out there who really need to get either educated or purged, and even the current IT downswing hasn't been able to do it. There are still too many people who are in the IT job market who should simply stop sending their resumes around. 1999 is over, and you weren't that good.
If you can't think beyond "this machine is broken, here's how to fix it" to "this process is broken, here's how to fix it" then don't bother going into IT. There are already way too many people who are perfectly technically capable in IT but who have no idea of how to solve, or in some cases even identify, a larger problem.
(And yes, I had a bad week at work)
Fuck you, Mimi!
What part of YHBT YHL HAND do you NOT understand?
Having recently been made redundant, I'm not sure that programming is a viable career option. One of the reasons for the redundancy was that the company is outsourcing development to India. OK, so the major reason was that we were the subject of a "merger" (takeover) and they wanted our customerbase.
BTW "we" were the result of another merger which had occurred 18 months earlier.
I see the combined company eventually employing only business analysts, project co-ordinators, salesmen and client liason people. There will probably be a few network and infrastructure guys but eventually, given that all PCs and laptops had a "standard" build, were updatable from a central network point etc, this could be outsourced too. That leaves support functions, like admin and purchasing. Be creative enough and that could be outsourced too!
Regarding software dev in the carribean - why not? In a country like Trinidad and Tobago, the dollar, Euro and Pound exchange rates are so favourable to "investors" that setting up a software shop really shouldn't be a problem. Trinis are generally well educated, they speak English as a first language (OK, so it may not be Queens English, but it's still English - mon!) they work hard. Matter of fact, I was thinking of doing the same thing, but in Barbados where most of the kids are highly educated and most of them are bored because there are no jobs. Those that don't drift into drugs are getting out to Canada, the States or the UK.
I know this first hand, I have family all over...
Selling trinkets to cruise ships. If I had to sell trinkets to cruise ship passengers to feed my family I would. It has nothing to do with the price of an office suite. It means that there is no need for office suites. There is no oppurtunity to use one whether it is free or not.
These trinkets are usually hand made by familys to be sold. It's a family business designed to fit their markets and has to do with the "bandwitdth" of their ecomony and
not the price of an office suite.
The US economy has a ton a bandwidth to support many industries. Just because they don't doesn't mean it's bad for them.
Begin Rant
I'd much rather sell a "trinket" than stand on the corner begging for cash for food.
It's not like OSS doesn't have a need for trinkets. Look at ThinkGeek.com selling trinkets to geeks. Ooooh look at the shiny light on my new Mach 3 combination LED flashlight, key chain, bottle opener, tire repair kit. Or my desktop refrigerator that holds a 6 pack of Geek Drink of Choice, or caffinated soap. What the fuck is caffinated soap for? Maybe it's for removing the blue thinking goo from my ass when I sat on it in my new ergonomic Quake Battle Chair.
Maybe our economy has too much bandwidth.
End Rant
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Ya mon. Me do dat open source 'ting.
The thought of trying to maintain a software development schedule on Island Time, wow. It makes my brain hurt.
Thomas Kinkade paintings are to the art world or McDonald's is to the food world. If you think that OSS will kill shrink-wrapped software, you're sadly mistaken.
Were the bars not strong enough? Did you really have to go into the damned cage and feed the troll? Maybe you're new here. If something is commented DOWN because it's a TROLL, don't respond.
That's what they were saying back then too...
My blog can kick your blog's ass
that 'Piracy' isn't the problem? Oh my...
Its only downhill from here. No there is no future for most people in the IT field.. so no, one should not aspire to get into it..
Find something longer term, like being an attorney..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
FLOS Caribbean: Success, Part II. More fodder, perhaps.
"Th US has always exported jobs. I started in IT in 1989 as an IT Manager and have avoided the development and engineering jobs like the plauge because they where being outsourced. In 1994 I changed my focus from IT Managment to security because better network management tools had arrived an made it easier to outsource IT Management. Through the 90s I watched my IT friends getting laid off as the companies they worked for outsource management to IBM, Exodus, C&W, ... In 2003 I took a promotion from Dir of Corp. Security to Dir of Production Operations and was laid off several months later after increasing uptime and everything else. Did I know that I would probably loose my job by taking the promotion? Yup! As a start-up on the decline I realised my director of sec. position was irrelevant so I angled for the Dir of Ops job which was very relevant to the company. I got the job and made improvements which benefited the company and I probably expended my employemt by over a year. Because I took the initiative to provide a service that my company needed I made out pretty well in the severance area.
It's up to me to make my self relevant to US employers and I have found that the easiest way is through being in management (though the politics are a bitch). You can't make an impact or change the world if you are locked in cube coding our trapped behind 15 miles of cable in a server room."
I'm sorry, this is really unfair of me, and I'm not trying to pick on you. But what occurred to me as I was reading your job hopping saga was that it was clear that copy editor never cropped up. All right, I'll shut up now and take the heat for picking on typos. I just thought it was funny. You seem to be a bright guy, you made some interesting points, others commented on those interesting points, and I'm sure when it counts you do an excellent job of communication.
from a previous .commeNT
that's astounding. a roomfull of phonIE stock markup billyonerrors, & they waNT to 'give' "up to" 10k for sum of yOUR saycrud kode. we're frenetic with the degree of their corepirate nazi sucksass.
we've (that's just us) contributed multiples of that amount in goods/services/time/resources without so much as a thank you from the 'community', let alone, some storIE on cnn. yikes. fauxking FraUDs they are. tell 'em robbIE.
consult with/trust yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
the daze of the phonIE payper liesense corepirate nazis is WANing into coolapps. lookout bullow.
more details at trustworthycomputing.com, which never caught on yet...
Don't go into programming. It is a dead end job. Our government has sold us out. Your job is eventually slated for it to disappear overseas. Instead, look at industries that are slated to expand over the next 10 years like health care, bio-genetics, and pharmacalogy.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Basic international economics. Without barriers, prices eventually reach an equilibrium. Country A has many peaches, so peaches are cheap. Country B does not have some many peaches, so peaches are not so cheap. The countries trade, Country A peach farmers win and country B farmer lose. Country A consumers win, while country B consumers most pay a bit higher price due to the increase in demand. However, the OVERALL QUANTITY OF CONSUMPTION INCREASES. That means the economy wins as a whole.
.)). Yes, it sucks. But it is just starting to suck for you and has sucked much longer for the rest of us. No, the world is not ending, you are just joining.
Other countries have cheaper labor so they "export" it by hosting foreign companies. Americans may have less to spend due to the weakening of their local monopoly on labor, but as consumers they will win with cheaper goods and services coming from these cheap labor countries. Also, the foreign countries will now actually have some money to spend on American goods. Overall effect: the overall economy grows at a faster rate.
Interest groups will be adversely effected, so you will hear people screaming bloody murder, but the U.S. economy will by no means be terminated. It may grow more slowly, but at a much less inflated rate which should help us avoid recessions like the one we are having now.
I guess just being an MSCE will not mean much anymore. IT guys will have to be like the rest of us, constantly trying to acquire a magical set of skills (languages, accredited degrees, certificates from professional organizations (not single companies . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
>Seriously, I've been through a couple of IT recessions, and it's never pretty.
No, this time it is different. IT in the US is going to go the way of shoe manufacturing went... offshore.
If all this en mass outsourcing wasn't happening now, the recession in IT would be over by now, and there would be job shortages in the US.
The fact is, with the Internet, programmers/project managers can be in India, or Romania, and it is the same as if they were in Miami, except that they can be paid $2/hr.
That is the future I am afraid. If you work in IT in the USA, I would seriously starting looking at other options in the long term, because IT isn't one of them (unless you want to go live in Bangalore or Mumbai).
when you are going to be forced to upgrade at some particular time that you have no control over?
.csv in both Excel and Open Office? I don't know if my version of Excel has some kind of bug, but its output was too messed up to deal with).
How can a company afford to pay programmers to customize after paying monopolistic prices to get basic functionality?
What if some of the tools I want to use are not part of the MS collective, how will I get the MS parts to talk to the non-MS parts (I have actually taken an Excel file, dumped it into
And, yes, I have modified APPLICATION (let's compare apples to apples, here) source code in order to get the kind of output I wanted (and it would have been a real bitch if I couldn't have).
No, it is not impossible to customize MS software, it just is not as economical.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Investment and reinvestment. Those two words are the root cause of the decline and the ultimate collapse of the IT industry. Read the article. Then read other articles about US companies outsourcing development to foreign countries and off-shore locations. In every one of them, the word investment is frequently used. In this case, it is the Carribean countries who may be able to invest the savings realized from moving off MS Office to OpenOffice.org in development of an IT infratructure and education.
But the problem is not these foreign nationalities investing and reinvesting in themselves and their citizens. That's how it should be. The problem is the substantial investment that US companies and even the US government are making in other countries. IBM's investment in India tops a billion dollars. General Motors investment in India matches that, and GM has said they'll probably begin moving their R&D operations to India. And worse, US politicians, for some reason I still cannot fathom, are urging companies to follow IBM and GM's example. New York senator Hillary Clinton is one such proponent, and she sees it as a popular stand to take on the issue!
This investment by US companies, cheered on by US politicians, in just a few years time, maybe even less, will hit a critical mass from which there will be no coming back. There's no other way to say it... to save a few bucks now, US companies are virtually guaranteeing that in a few years time, there will be limited to no opportunity for US citizens in the IT industry.
Now, having said all this, I think you are quite right that the bottom could still fall out of the U.S economy, quite possibly due to consumer spending. I am inclined to think the levels of household debt are alarming here. Consumers do not have much more to spend.
So your "correct" solution leaves the bottom falling out of the US economy?
Just how do you define "correct"? You a Libertarian cultist or something? (I'm joking.)
The real problem should be sort of obvious. The "middle class" is the one that does the bulk of consumer spending. Quite a few of the people displaced by outsourcing will never work again at anything remotely resembling their former income levels. Our economy is consumer-driven. There is NO way the people who are talking about what wonderful things Bush has done for them can buy enough consumer products to keep the economy afloat.
Which puts the "top 5%" who derive their income from salaries at risk.
The only people who are really safe from this have enough money invested (and they'd better be prepared to move it out of the US) so they can live for the rest of their lives without worrying about a job. The rest of us with high-tech skills should be thinking about emigration.
As far as outsourcing goes, what are our Fortune 500 companies going to do when the companies they outsource to decide that they know more about what it takes to make it in the US market than their increasingly out of touch American bosses do? Not that the people who outsourced will suffer, they'll have cashed out years before.
The people who think "nanotech" will save the US economy are whistling in the dark. Those jobs are going overseas as soon as production technology is stabilized.
The rest of the bad news is. . . a large middle class appears to be necessary for a stable modern democracy. The middle class is shrinking with increasing speed. How stable is a country where the "good jobs" basically don't exist in the US anymore, other than the few decently paying jobs that must be done locally?
With respect to publically funded research, remember that the bulk of taxes that pay for this also come from the middle class.
Skilled trades, maybe. I'm not sure that medicine is on the list, telecommuting for doctors is increasingly an option, though this may not be all that important in a population where an increasing percentage of the population can't afford medical care.
The doofus that said that the USA is here to stay is right. The land on which most of us are sitting isn't going much of anywhere. But in terms of either being the world technology leader or a viable place to live or even a superpower. . . the US might have another decade with luck. It might be a lot less.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Brian Lara rocks! 'nuff said. (And so does the annual carnival at Port of Spain... waaay cool stuff)
More than mere navel gazing.
As you problably know, Latin America economies are a mess. Some countries (Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica) are doing better than others (take Venezuela, now on a very deep crisis even having a lots of oil and a dictator running the country); OpenSource is an excelent tool on these coutries because not only reduces costs but also gives the people the ability to learn from the greath job made by other smart people.
:)). Just ask wich software is being used on the workplace: Bind, Sendmail, Gated, GNU Linux, GCC, Perl, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Amanda, Net-SNMP, etc.
The cool thing about this development model is that everyone with willing and some knoledge can contribute; The cost of the software goes to the proper place (support for the ones that can afford it) and better exposure (you have the code, learn from it and if you can give something back to the community).
If the tool works then people will them in their dailiy jobs reagrdless of their code nature (open / closed (don't mess with sucess
Not only IT. Almost all R&D is exportable. Check the bioinformatics and drug chemistry mailing lists. How many American names can you find there? If I'm a chemical company, I'd love to have my R&D in a country where the folks can just chuck stuff down the drain when they're done with the experiment. And as for mechanical design - well, Autocad files compress pretty damn well for overseas transfer, don't they?
I don't see a single R&D job left in the US when this whole globalization thing finishes. Of course, the only problem is that the US and then the global economy collapses (because the US is still ~30-40% of global economy) when all of the jobs disappear, but no use crying over spilled milk, eh? After all, we offshored manufacturing and everything was still OK. God knows another 30% or so off the economy won't hurt, will it?
That is all.
Is IT still a viable field to get into and if so will it last?"
/rant off
I'm sorry, but is this a dumb question or what? The tech field is here to stay, so why even ask such a questions. The only reason why jobs are hard to find is that the *investing* side of the world thought that tech field was the *49ers* of the 21 century. Alot of wannbe tech people have jobs today that real techies should have and it's a shame. These guys should be doing something closer to what their real skills adapt too, not taking jobs from guys that actually have the skills to do it.
Rum and Coca Cola
by the Lord Invader
Since the yankees come to Trinidad
They have the young girls going mad
The young girls say they treat them nice
And they give them a better price
Chorus:
They buy rum and coca-cola
Go down Point Cumana
Both mother and daughter
Working for the Yankee dollar
I had a little mopsy the other day
Her mother came and took her away
Then her mother and her sisters
Went in a car with some soldiers
There are some aristos in Port -of- Spain
I know them well, but I won't call names
In the day they wouldn't give you a right
But you can see them with the foreigners late at night.
A couple got married one afternoon
And was to go Mayaro on honeymoon
The very night the wife went with a Yankee lad
And the stupid husband went staring mad.
Inspector Jory did a good job
At St James he raid a recreation club
They were carrying on the club as a brothel
The condition in which he found the girls I cannot tell
Why does something like computer programming need "Evangalising"? Could it be because they're a bunch of fucking communists at the FSF and GNU? I think so.
Evangalism is a _marketing_ tactic. There is no need to MARKET the concept of giving code into the public domain. BSD-style licenses and Fred Fish inspired code sharing systems are great. GNU Public License and the so-called "OSS movement" is nothing but fucked communism that will suck you into mediocracy like any French or Russian immigrant can tell you.
I like the idea of economic bandwidth too. One of the biggest problems with the IT industry in the UK and facing tecchie grads right now is coming to terms with the fact that the economy just doesn't have the economic bandwidth to gainfully employ them.
There is still a staggering number of incompetents employed in IT in the UK that the last recession didn't purge. They are the people who will buy trinkets. Hehe.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
With the exception of salesmen making in-person calls, I don't see any reason why these functions can't be outsourced as well.
The last frontier is, , , management.
While a CEO of a company who has outsourced all its core functions isn't going to render himself redundant on purpose, he has in effect, built an overseas organization capable of doing all the business the original organization physically in the USA was doing.
Unlike that CEO and his staff, this overseas organization will be the people in constant touch with the customer base and doing the actual providing of whatever goods and services the company provides. The CEO will be increasingly out of touch with what "his company" is doing. His orders and directives will be less and less meaningful. Sooner or later, he's going to be out of the loop.
One day, he either wakes up to find that nobody's answering his e-mail because his staff has left, taking the company's database and staff, or he gets an offer for the company's assets at a ridiculously low price, but one that lets him keep his golden parachute.
Does anyone believe that any court in India is going to pay any attention to any legal action to enforce a non-compete agreement after the locals have paid him off? (or the judge might simply tell that CEO that his action has no merit based on patriotism)
Forbidding the new company to do business via the American court system will only accomplish the extinction of the old one, as the people capable of doing the work in the US will be long gone, and chances are, the company won't have the physical assets in-country required to do the work.
In most cases, the foriegners will have the sense to let the now ex-CEO keep his golden parachute and the company's stockholders will simply find they've been hung out to dry.
Don't feel sorry for the current generation of CEOs. I'm certain that they are aware of this, and will have cashed out and either retired by then or will look for a new nation (probably EU) to repeat this cycle in. Their successors will take their golden parachutes and run.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I can't comment on every caribbean country, but I can on the one im pretty familiar with, the US Virgin Islands. The largest employer is the government, and especially in the educational system you would expect people are eager to at least check out OSS.
And actually, a lot of people are. The ones that aren't in charge. They only get to benefit from money savings that can be achieved.
Unfortunately, making it actually happen is almost impossible. Corruption is a major part of life, so when a government deals with major contracts for software, a lot of the money gets well...lost. Now imagine the decision makers suddenly losing part of that 'income'.
Cor
If you like to use command line commands, use cdrecord. If you prefer a GUI there are several available.
/tmp/tmp.iso $DIRECTORY && cdrecord -eject -v dev=1,0,0 speed=24 driveropts=burnproof /tmp/tmp.iso
Data CD:
mkisofs -J -l -R -o
You can get more information in the how-to's and articles on the internet.
Ultimately, it's a question of labor costs and that is largely determined by cost of living. I'm still waiting for the mass brain drain to some hospitable, low cost of living offshore site.
If it is good enough for most people without the expensive professional polish, then I'd suggest the money is poorly spent.
I think that rather than professional programming it is all too often salesmen having a gloss put on something to sell to admindroids who see that as an indication of quality when it is not.
Losing the gloss and concentrating on the innards is an advance.
For small IT companies, NOTHING compares to FOSS when it comes to cost of doing business.
Then there's the fact that when we come across bugs, incompatibilities, and other problems we can often just fix it ourselves in the time it would take to file a bug report with MS.
BTW, I use MS as my example here because we used to be an MS-based shop.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The question is whether upper-level management makes up at least, say, 10% of the heirarchy? If so, then everything's gonna be alright. The First World will be composed of the managers, "professionals", scientists, and intellectuals plus the people who need to be geographically close to serve them (hairdressers, etc.). The Second World will be composed of mid-level managers, knowledge-workers, etc. And the Third World will be those extracting the raw materials the global economy exists to transform.
CEO salaries are raising so fast because the world is getting ready for this: we of the First World need to be doing important enough work to support approximately 10 subordinates or enough money to pay 10 servants.
lamontg, Foo Goo, and anybody else with an opinion:
What advice do you have for someone in the middle of a Master's in CS for getting into IT management? Work your way up through the ranks while there's still time? Is an MBA worth the cost? Or do all I need from here is a bit of networking?
This is somewhat off-topic, but as someone who knows a fair bit about both T&T and Canada, what would you think of annexation? As you likely know, there have been a number of proposals over the years for British parts of the Caribbean to join the Dominion of Canada. These ideas have started to regain some momentum in the last few months.
The arrangement could be anywhere from
protectorate status (as they have now with the UK, I understand) to provinces with special cultural protections like Quebec. Do you think this would be good for T&T? For Canada? Would people be open to the idea? Are there significant barriers?
The very heart of "capitalism" is that companies reinvest in their organization to build the capital of their organization.
The very heart of capitalism is that idea that companies sell goods then reinvest a portion of their proceeds back into the organization to build capital.
In the software industry, the capital isn't exactly tangible. The capital is not a physical machine, but a collection of ideas. This is why economists try to define an abstract concept called intellectual property.
The software company sells goods, but reinvests in its big bag of tricks. This intellectual property is essentially the capital of the software industry.
The free software movement essentially says that software is owned by the community. Well, when you take that approach, you essentially remove all vestiges of capitalism from the software industry.
How can the free software movement's denial of the ability to build capital be considered capitalism?
If OSS does not allow companies to accumulate and profit from building up capital, we will not get to the place where we have a large number of successful firms implementing OSS.
No matter how we twist our words, capital is part of capitalism. For OSS to thrive, there needs to be a way for companies to build capital.
Jimminy Jillickers, Batman, looks like you fucked up the formatting!
Use "Plain Old Text" next time!
Everyone knows the caribbiean is filled with pirates!
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org