I kinda support this poster.
I stay in India and out here a Microsoft employee would be looked up to, a Google employee would be recognized and a RedHat employee would be given condescending looks for not having been "talented enough to get a job with MS":-)
I pretty much do not know a single person who runs no non-pirated software in their home PCs. Heck my 1st computer came with Win2k preloaded for free. On the other hand, getting opensource stuff is harder. Infact I bought Fedora 4 CDs on EBay. So I got Win2k free but, FC4, I had to buy!
Out here, people adore Microsoft for doing the world a favour by bringing out tools like office and giving them an OS they can use. It is only the top universities where students get to use Unix. Every one else (barring software companies), pretty much runs on pirated Windows.
I suspect it actually helps Microsoft- more familiarity with their products, greater evangelism for their software, and may be some day, MS can get these people to pay for the same as well. Not sure if this was an intended fallout though
You do realise that a lot of these buildings are under no fly zones and that you would have the police check on you if you tried photographing them
Thats true not just about Indian, but in most countries.
In the library, books would have snaps but which would not have any real time implications. A snap of Pokharan taken 8 years ago would not show India preparing for a nuclear test, would it?
I agree that the basic storyline has always been the same, but I find it readable none the same and it is to the credit of JKR that she manages to keep me as hooked now as I was, a decade ago (when I was a teen).
The difference between the two editions is not in the content but in the book binding and the covers of the same
You may see the differences in covers here.
The top row is the children's version, incase, you fail to get it!!
A friend of mine from a 50 people shop called me to check what I thought of Amazon web services. I frankly had no opnion since I am not much into web services, but I guess this is because, they were using Google SOAP APIs for themselves.
I am sure they would much rather look at another SOAP oriented service provider than change to AJAX, and I can understand their concern. They never did expect to be desupported (even on a beta product) since it was google they were discussing!
This does make me worry about the other google services I use (Gtalk, GMail etc.)
Re:Statistics catches bad treatment of kids?
on
More A's, More Pay
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually I have no idea if the case that you pointed out is something that can be caught statistically (I would think not!)
However I read this interesting chapter from the book Freakonomics [PDF] where they identify the teachers who might be trying to fudge the system to make their students score better! Read the chapter called "What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?" to identify how the economist Levitt is identifying the people.
Having said that, I am not sure it helps doing this at all! Some professions like nursing and teaching are better off not being measured in terms of incentives. Some acts like blood donations are not even paid for in most countries. Incentives can only help trivialise these things.
I do not mean that the people should be paid peanuts (infact they should be paid a lot more than they are paid - especially in India, where I have stayed for the most part of my life!).
However, creating a competition of who throws out patients from thier wards faster or who makes most students pass with higher grade will do serious damage to the patients and the students! Somethings should be sacrosanct - education and human lives are two of them!
The article does not explain the thing clearly, but it appears that the person is not just a performer but also the bar manager (and presumably the owner) So this guy does qualify as the owner of the venue
Ohh, if you are cracking a joke, hopefully I will be able to join in.
Jokes stop being fun, when they prevent someone else from joining in.
But I grant you the point that you can have your share of fun!
As for the $3 billion aid, if it is coming out of your tax dollars, and you object to it, you gotta take it up with your Govt. I for one, would be glad if such "Mashall Plan-esque" charity was discontinued!
And India is a country of a billion people. On my part, I am returning you my $3. Go have a beer for me, willya?:-)
On the contrary, check this and this to see how olympics bleed more money than they generate.
And considering that the cost of Olympics mostly falls on one city (predominantly) and the cost of a moon mission is bourne the by entire country, I do not see how much of a "per-citizen" difference, you will manage to get!
I read some of the comments - How the money needed to fund this project could be better used for other things like eradication of poverty, better infrastructure etc. - Some sly comments on corner side stores - etc. All I can say is, as a soverign country, with a govt elected by a democratic process, India is entitled to its opinion on all self sponsored projects. And for people who have not noticed, most facilities that you deem common are often byproducts of funding on defence and scientific projects.
Sending a man to the moon is as pointless an excercise as hosting the olympics. The real payback is that the target motivates people to push harder on all fronts, develop a sense of pride, develop better infrastructure, create a consumer market bouying the economy, make more children wonder about science/sports etc. These things are often intangible, but more useful in the long run than those guided missiles you gurantee can destory the world, but cant deploy, since they will take you out as well!
Stop trivializing everything and you may find the world is doing ok for itself, with you or inspite of you!
Its ok for slashdotters to say that people should not trust email links and dowload stuff from wikipedia, but what about others?
I have spent hours explaining to my friends and relatives why links in emails are bad, but that does not stop most of them from exploring them once in a while.
To add to that, my friends and relatives have seen me visit wikipedia, they have heard me explain how I find a LOT of useful information at that place!
If a mail links to wikipedia, I can see my mom recollecting that I go there and follow that link. I can also see her trying out whats written there as gospel truth (she trusts me with her computer blindly!).
I am glad that they tracked it and fixed the problem, but I am hoping they will devise faster/better ways to scan text and not allow just about anything to be published!
I would want to add to this one. I have seen a lot of kids opt for this route in my college, but I find that one fatal flaw makes the entire experience useless from the point of the professor (making it harder for the next batch of students who want to go down the same path)
At 17, most kids have a lot of motivation, but a lot less education.
They have almost never written code for anyone else apart for themselves. They do not understand the concept of writing code that others can re-use.
So documentation (inside the code as well as separately), version control, writing testcases are things they just do not understand.
Heck, I saw two kids assigned to the same Computer vision project decide they wanted to look at the image matrices in exactly the opposite way (1s being 0s for the other kid), causing me to write glue code that converted the matrice of one guy to be suitable for the other.
So learn a couple of things
Comments inside the code
Maintaining/Updating a wiki. Document all the hacks you made, the extra software you installed to make the thing work, and see that it can be ported to some other computer as well
Writing Testcases
Some version control
Do not dump the code and the executable on the professor on the last day. Update him daily/weekly and ask for someone you can hand over the code to at the end of the 2-3 month internship
You will possibly be busy after the internship, but if the professor drops you a line asking for some clarification, take the time out to answer it for him
Lastly, get some college. You cant run away from it, if you want to stay in this profession.
All the best
I dont really know how it works elsewhere, but atleast in India, I find I need to change cell phones close to once in 2 years because
- The battery died out on me
- The phone company stopped shipping a battery that fits into my phone
The problem is that every company is pushing for market share of India and in the process releasing new models but they are not doing a good job of stocking spare supplies for older handsets!
Effectively, I am being forced to change a handset simply because I cant find the battery. I can ofcourse now sell off my otherwise perfectly working phone over Ebay, but apart from conning the buyer, what use will I get of this?
I can only speak for myself and this is what happenned to me. 2 years into my job out of college, I got into a rut! Work was not really throwing up any challenges and I really was not progressing fast enough!
I must have been mad, but I registered for Grad school and started attending classes while staying at my job!
Man - was it hard!
The good things that happenned were -
- College really forced me to solve non-trivial problems under simulated circumstances.
- College forced me to submit solutions in languages that I do not use at work
- College forced me to study subjects that I would never be exposed to at my work place!
- Also interestingly, I have more respect for software licenses now and rather than use cracked software (as do most college students in my part of the world), I stuck to hand coding (often without IDEs)
- Often, I coded my problems on one OS (have to use windows at work) and was evaluated on a different one (mostly Linux). That made me more aware of platform dependencies, even in languages like Java etc.
I have a supportive wife, and my office is accomodating enough, so I have survived thus far. But it is also true that the entire soup I got into has forced me to upgrade my skill sets. I would not recommend usage of my methods without caution, but it sure is doing wonders for me!
Oracle to the best of my knowlege is trying to figure out IE7 as best as they can.
Their official blogs are discussing this as well
The list of browsers supported on Oracle 11i Ebusiness Suite is mentioned here
And as of date, IE7 is not a part of it!
The premise of the idea sounds interesting. I have had opportunities to work on localized open source work at University level in India. My father used to participate in a co-operative and I got to see some of the action up-close-and-personal.
I agree that the two may work well together, but I am a bit concerned how the division of tasks will take place. In co-operatives, (atleast the one that I saw), there is usually a clear division of tasks. This worked ok because
Though the notion of a co-operative is egalitarian, actually, there is a small group of dedicated people, who are most involved
These people who usually form part of the board, are "more equal than the rest" and can actually make people do stuff that is important for the co-operative, but can sound unsavoury
Also, the co-operative is a pyramidal thing, with the people towards the bottom being less skilled than the ones at the top. Its a small pyramid with a wide base, but, it is for sure a pyramid. The only reason the people at the base are willing to work there are, the money generated is for real, (and sometimes, because they trust the people above them to be working for their benefits)
While what I said is nothing new and is already in place in most successful open source models, I find some differences which I would be interested in knowing, how the new model will bridge
A co-operative of software engineers is hard to maintain, since every one comes with a high level of skill sets and the resultant ego. This makes the setting up of a pyramid very hard
While there are successful models of monetization of open source, they are few and far between and most of these models are hard to replicate. This takes away the basic incentive of a co-operative
A co-operative is often a below the radar operation, generating wealth with out too much of recognition. Most opensource projects (the way I see them) work the other way round
Do correct me if I am wrong, but I would love to read more on what other people think on this!
Not necessarily!
Trivia is not trivialized by having access to authentic data!
Infact, it can stimulate more such discussions! Gyan over beer may become the norm - if you can remember the entire argument the next day, that is!
Interestingly, discussions in a pub lead to the most authentic source of trivia! Who knows, wikipedia may benefit in some way by this as well!
But then we would need swap space to unzip it on the fly and extract the page we are looking for!
I shudder to think of how to go about doing that in real time with minimal memory
All your base are belong to us!
I am an Indian as well. Allow me to point out that if the courts uphold the claim made by the Karnataka state govt, then we are looking at
- 0.5% increase in taxability of a product whose usage is predicted to keep going up for as far as the Govt can see!
- This is the Govt of Karnataka, which hosts India's powerhouse IT companies, and with a demography that is HIGHLY inclined to use this "commodity". This increase will be maximally beneficial for this one state
- Other state govts would also want to join in the fun if they can, so they will have tacit support from other states as well
What we need to know is whether this claim will be upheld in the court of law
I have personally sent myself a gmail invite on yahoo and found that it went to my spam folder.
But this was like a year and a half back... when invites where only just beginning to spread.
I have not tried doing that again, so cant say if that happens yet!
Slashdot Mirror
I kinda support this poster. :-)
I pretty much do not know a single person who runs no non-pirated software in their home PCs. Heck my 1st computer came with Win2k preloaded for free. On the other hand, getting opensource stuff is harder. Infact I bought Fedora 4 CDs on EBay. So I got Win2k free but, FC4, I had to buy!
I stay in India and out here a Microsoft employee would be looked up to, a Google employee would be recognized and a RedHat employee would be given condescending looks for not having been "talented enough to get a job with MS"
Out here, people adore Microsoft for doing the world a favour by bringing out tools like office and giving them an OS they can use. It is only the top universities where students get to use Unix. Every one else (barring software companies), pretty much runs on pirated Windows.
I suspect it actually helps Microsoft- more familiarity with their products, greater evangelism for their software, and may be some day, MS can get these people to pay for the same as well. Not sure if this was an intended fallout though
You do realise that a lot of these buildings are under no fly zones and that you would have the police check on you if you tried photographing them Thats true not just about Indian, but in most countries. In the library, books would have snaps but which would not have any real time implications. A snap of Pokharan taken 8 years ago would not show India preparing for a nuclear test, would it?
I agree that the basic storyline has always been the same, but I find it readable none the same and it is to the credit of JKR that she manages to keep me as hooked now as I was, a decade ago (when I was a teen).
The difference between the two editions is not in the content but in the book binding and the covers of the same
You may see the differences in covers here.
The top row is the children's version, incase, you fail to get it!!
A friend of mine from a 50 people shop called me to check what I thought of Amazon web services. I frankly had no opnion since I am not much into web services, but I guess this is because, they were using Google SOAP APIs for themselves.
I am sure they would much rather look at another SOAP oriented service provider than change to AJAX, and I can understand their concern. They never did expect to be desupported (even on a beta product) since it was google they were discussing!
This does make me worry about the other google services I use (Gtalk, GMail etc.)
Actually I have no idea if the case that you pointed out is something that can be caught statistically (I would think not!)
However I read this interesting chapter from the book Freakonomics [PDF] where they identify the teachers who might be trying to fudge the system to make their students score better! Read the chapter called "What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?" to identify how the economist Levitt is identifying the people.
Having said that, I am not sure it helps doing this at all! Some professions like nursing and teaching are better off not being measured in terms of incentives. Some acts like blood donations are not even paid for in most countries. Incentives can only help trivialise these things. I do not mean that the people should be paid peanuts (infact they should be paid a lot more than they are paid - especially in India, where I have stayed for the most part of my life!).
However, creating a competition of who throws out patients from thier wards faster or who makes most students pass with higher grade will do serious damage to the patients and the students!
Somethings should be sacrosanct - education and human lives are two of them!
The article does not explain the thing clearly, but it appears that the person is not just a performer but also the bar manager (and presumably the owner)
So this guy does qualify as the owner of the venue
Ohh, if you are cracking a joke, hopefully I will be able to join in.
:-)
Jokes stop being fun, when they prevent someone else from joining in.
But I grant you the point that you can have your share of fun!
As for the $3 billion aid, if it is coming out of your tax dollars, and you object to it, you gotta take it up with your Govt. I for one, would be glad if such "Mashall Plan-esque" charity was discontinued!
And India is a country of a billion people. On my part, I am returning you my $3. Go have a beer for me, willya?
On the contrary, check this and this to see how olympics bleed more money than they generate.
And considering that the cost of Olympics mostly falls on one city (predominantly) and the cost of a moon mission is bourne the by entire country, I do not see how much of a "per-citizen" difference, you will manage to get!
I read some of the comments
- How the money needed to fund this project could be better used for other things like eradication of poverty, better infrastructure etc.
- Some sly comments on corner side stores
- etc.
All I can say is, as a soverign country, with a govt elected by a democratic process, India is entitled to its opinion on all self sponsored projects. And for people who have not noticed, most facilities that you deem common are often byproducts of funding on defence and scientific projects.
Sending a man to the moon is as pointless an excercise as hosting the olympics. The real payback is that the target motivates people to push harder on all fronts, develop a sense of pride, develop better infrastructure, create a consumer market bouying the economy, make more children wonder about science/sports etc. These things are often intangible, but more useful in the long run than those guided missiles you gurantee can destory the world, but cant deploy, since they will take you out as well!
Stop trivializing everything and you may find the world is doing ok for itself, with you or inspite of you!
Its ok for slashdotters to say that people should not trust email links and dowload stuff from wikipedia, but what about others?
I have spent hours explaining to my friends and relatives why links in emails are bad, but that does not stop most of them from exploring them once in a while.
To add to that, my friends and relatives have seen me visit wikipedia, they have heard me explain how I find a LOT of useful information at that place!
If a mail links to wikipedia, I can see my mom recollecting that I go there and follow that link. I can also see her trying out whats written there as gospel truth (she trusts me with her computer blindly!).
I am glad that they tracked it and fixed the problem, but I am hoping they will devise faster/better ways to scan text and not allow just about anything to be published!
At 17, most kids have a lot of motivation, but a lot less education.
They have almost never written code for anyone else apart for themselves. They do not understand the concept of writing code that others can re-use.
So documentation (inside the code as well as separately), version control, writing testcases are things they just do not understand.
Heck, I saw two kids assigned to the same Computer vision project decide they wanted to look at the image matrices in exactly the opposite way (1s being 0s for the other kid), causing me to write glue code that converted the matrice of one guy to be suitable for the other.
So learn a couple of things
- Comments inside the code
- Maintaining/Updating a wiki. Document all the hacks you made, the extra software you installed to make the thing work, and see that it can be ported to some other computer as well
- Writing Testcases
- Some version control
- Do not dump the code and the executable on the professor on the last day. Update him daily/weekly and ask for someone you can hand over the code to at the end of the 2-3 month internship
- You will possibly be busy after the internship, but if the professor drops you a line asking for some clarification, take the time out to answer it for him
Lastly, get some college. You cant run away from it, if you want to stay in this profession. All the bestHe is possibly a student, only not a college student
AT 17, that may well be the state for a lot of kids!
So I have to disagree with you there!
I dont really know how it works elsewhere, but atleast in India, I find I need to change cell phones close to once in 2 years because
- The battery died out on me
- The phone company stopped shipping a battery that fits into my phone
The problem is that every company is pushing for market share of India and in the process releasing new models but they are not doing a good job of stocking spare supplies for older handsets!
Effectively, I am being forced to change a handset simply because I cant find the battery. I can ofcourse now sell off my otherwise perfectly working phone over Ebay, but apart from conning the buyer, what use will I get of this?
I can only speak for myself and this is what happenned to me. 2 years into my job out of college, I got into a rut! Work was not really throwing up any challenges and I really was not progressing fast enough!
I must have been mad, but I registered for Grad school and started attending classes while staying at my job!
Man - was it hard!
The good things that happenned were -
- College really forced me to solve non-trivial problems under simulated circumstances.
- College forced me to submit solutions in languages that I do not use at work
- College forced me to study subjects that I would never be exposed to at my work place!
- Also interestingly, I have more respect for software licenses now and rather than use cracked software (as do most college students in my part of the world), I stuck to hand coding (often without IDEs)
- Often, I coded my problems on one OS (have to use windows at work) and was evaluated on a different one (mostly Linux). That made me more aware of platform dependencies, even in languages like Java etc.
I have a supportive wife, and my office is accomodating enough, so I have survived thus far. But it is also true that the entire soup I got into has forced me to upgrade my skill sets. I would not recommend usage of my methods without caution, but it sure is doing wonders for me!
Oracle to the best of my knowlege is trying to figure out IE7 as best as they can.
Their official blogs are discussing this as well
The list of browsers supported on Oracle 11i Ebusiness Suite is mentioned here
And as of date, IE7 is not a part of it!
I agree that the two may work well together, but I am a bit concerned how the division of tasks will take place. In co-operatives, (atleast the one that I saw), there is usually a clear division of tasks. This worked ok because
- Though the notion of a co-operative is egalitarian, actually, there is a small group of dedicated people, who are most involved
- These people who usually form part of the board, are "more equal than the rest" and can actually make people do stuff that is important for the co-operative, but can sound unsavoury
- Also, the co-operative is a pyramidal thing, with the people towards the bottom being less skilled than the ones at the top. Its a small pyramid with a wide base, but, it is for sure a pyramid. The only reason the people at the base are willing to work there are, the money generated is for real, (and sometimes, because they trust the people above them to be working for their benefits)
While what I said is nothing new and is already in place in most successful open source models, I find some differences which I would be interested in knowing, how the new model will bridge- A co-operative of software engineers is hard to maintain, since every one comes with a high level of skill sets and the resultant ego. This makes the setting up of a pyramid very hard
- While there are successful models of monetization of open source, they are few and far between and most of these models are hard to replicate. This takes away the basic incentive of a co-operative
- A co-operative is often a below the radar operation, generating wealth with out too much of recognition. Most opensource projects (the way I see them) work the other way round
Do correct me if I am wrong, but I would love to read more on what other people think on this!Not necessarily!
Trivia is not trivialized by having access to authentic data!
Infact, it can stimulate more such discussions!
Gyan over beer may become the norm - if you can remember the entire argument the next day, that is!
Interestingly, discussions in a pub lead to the most authentic source of trivia! Who knows, wikipedia may benefit in some way by this as well!
But then we would need swap space to unzip it on the fly and extract the page we are looking for!
I shudder to think of how to go about doing that in real time with minimal memory
All your base are belong to us!
I am an Indian as well. Allow me to point out that if the courts uphold the claim made by the Karnataka state govt, then we are looking at - 0.5% increase in taxability of a product whose usage is predicted to keep going up for as far as the Govt can see! - This is the Govt of Karnataka, which hosts India's powerhouse IT companies, and with a demography that is HIGHLY inclined to use this "commodity". This increase will be maximally beneficial for this one state - Other state govts would also want to join in the fun if they can, so they will have tacit support from other states as well What we need to know is whether this claim will be upheld in the court of law
I have personally sent myself a gmail invite on yahoo and found that it went to my spam folder. But this was like a year and a half back... when invites where only just beginning to spread. I have not tried doing that again, so cant say if that happens yet!