I'm always surprised at how many/.ers love to whine about how terrible outsourcing is and that it makes everything worse. I'm working in a "developing country" (China) and managing for my company (European) outsourced productions. There are many problems which must be solved when outsourcing and if you don't monitor well enough then you will fail. Outsourcing mainly fails because someone doesn't think enough about it and falls for the "wow, 30% savings" trap. It's not a "we signed the contract, now where are the profits" situation.
I'm not saying that outsourcing is the cure-all as some people want to see it, but it certainly can work and then it can also provide good work to people in the home company. In our company most people are still employed and are doing the quality/project management now.
Outsourcing is an old topic (someone mentioned rightly the outsourcing that happened to the English textile sector in the 19th century). It cuts many people and they have to adjust to the new situation which is often painful.
But if the companies stop trying to be more efficient, then the US/European/Japanese economies can't compete with the new and upcoming ones (India/China). The only way to survive is to try and get higher on the skill ladder. This is true for the individual but also for an economy that wants to compete worldwide. You can't demand 5 times the price for something that can be had with the same or slightly less quality somewhere else.
Everyone wants his/her life to improve always but noone wants to accept changes to the current situation. This is not how it works.
This is such an obvious misinformed troll that I'm wondering why moderators haven't noticed it yet.
It is the US Army and US Air Force that provide stability in Europe.
Wake up. This was (partly) true in the cold war. Europe is very different now with Germany and France being the driving force behind the European union.
Europe has changed and luckily for the better part. For once people seemed to learn from history.
Try to get to know Europe before talking about something you have no clue about.
IMHO, one of the primary reasons USA is so strong in defense is because all the brains from overseas came to our country to profit from their work and flee from religious persecution.
Not the full truth. The USA is so strong in defense because:
I read about a mail forwarding service some time ago. You get a proper U.S. billing/mail address, but can live anywhere you like. They just foward it to you.
Let's see what google says: http://www.myus.com/ http://www.mailforwar ding.cc/ and more...
One thing that most if not all war supporters seem to forget: Every country and government wants to disarm Iraq and see Saddam go.
The UN inspectors said that they can disarm the Iraq in several months (9 months, I think). The world (about 190 countries) other than the "coalition of willing" (with only 3 countries sending fighting troops, how "willing" is that?) wants to disarm Iraq, but peacefully. No one likes Saddam Hussein and everybody wants to see him go, but that is not a very convincing reason for a war (there are much worse dictators/governments out there).
Actually, 'foreigner' doesn't even come close to auslander.
Where the hell have you ever heard this complete crap?
"Auslaender" is an insult? Are you out of your mind or have you spent too much time with Neo-Nazis? "Auslaender" has totally the same meaning as "foreigner" with all bad (?) and good things attached to it. Maybe spend some time there before you claim ridiculous "facts" about something you have absolutely no clue about.
You know, this is probably true. But one bad casualty of this war before it even started was that people stopped believing the US and its "coalition of willing" their facts/evidences/stories. The former faith in facts (even though people were suspicious before too) got a severe blow when it became clear that several presented facts (e.g. by Powell for god's sake, he was always seen as someone with integrity until then) were clearly wrong or misinterpreted in a very convenient way.
I'm not saying that Uday isn't a sadist and I'm not saying that this information is probably wrong, but be careful about horror stories being told when a war is going on. It's called propaganda (and it's used by all sides, but you won't hear much about the other side if you don't follow Iraqi TV).
(BTW, who is the owner of the Sydney Morning Herald? Murdoch? If yes, then chances are high that this story is pure propaganda.)
Re:"Bush's War" at ends with "The War On Terror"
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
[...] we wouldn't have the problems we have with France, Germany, etc. when we ask them for help.
Oh, how I love that argument. Makes me smile about the stupidity behind it.
Translated it means: "We have no evidence and no real reason other than that Saddam is a BAD guy (but you know that which is why you want to disarm him peacefully), but hey come on, we (forget about Russia and the other allies) saved you 60 years ago, that must be reason enough to kill thousands of innocent people! You are SOOOO ungrateful!"
Using MS' compiler has - under very special circumstances! - some advantages, e.g. if you already have code that was written for it and you also have paid for the compiler. You can maintain that code under Linux then without needing a Windows machine.
I wouldn't do it and I especially didn't think it was worthy news, but your comment missed the point in this case.
Not necessarily. Outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean that you build up your own resources in India. Our mother company outsources for some years to India (and now more and more to China), but they don't own a company there, they just have a partner there.
So, you can use them for projects when you need time intensive work (and actually their quality is good!). The Indian (or Chinese) partner company wins because they have well paid contracts from outside their country and the mother company wins by being competitive and not having to pay as much as domestic companies.
(On the other hand the domestic companies that offer the same services lose, but this will always be and if it wasn't, we still wouldn't eat anything other than our local food, wear local clothes,... and didn't have the living standard we have.)
"What's even more interesting is how many people have left Debian for Gentoo. Debian users are some of the most loyal I know, and yet many of them have simply moved on. I'm guessing Debian blew it with the long delay's between releases."
Exactly. I've been using Debian for the last 6 years and there is still nothing better for a server in my eyes. But the releases are really too slow and the "unstable" branch is sometimes just that - unstable. For my desktop I occasionally tried other distributions: RedHat, Mandrake, Suse. But none was able to come close to the ease of maintaining the system which is also important for me on my desktop. Gentoo Linux was quite a pain to install initially, but I think it has finally replaced Debian on my desktop. As a Debian user you know what's going on on your system anyway so using a source based distribution is no big problem. But you need ADSL to be happy with Gentoo.
When talking about Europe, most people are talking about the European Union, which means they are comparing similiar population sizes and living standards.
If they compare the internet population of North America and India, do you complain that they didn't include China?
You're right though that they are too scarce on details about which countries are included.
I am writing this from Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, China. Google stopped working several days ago and still doesn't work. Going to a different IP address works though. So it might be a feeble attempt at blocking or a routing problem.
It says the truth. Giving nations food mostly serves only one purpose (even thought not intended): destroy the local markets and make people decide not to farm, because they get the food for free.
There are exceptions, when it's a total emergency and it's for a short time, but teaching is absolutely the way to go, if you want to reduce hunger and poverty in the world.
Stop thinking about the American market only!
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United Linux is Here
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· Score: 1
Ok, I read enough "too little, too late" comments and about how established the name of RedHat is and how "United Linux" doesn't have a chance.
I know that e.g. SuSE is the name for Linux in Germany. Most people who haven't used Linux so far connect the name "Linux" with SuSE and not RedHat.
RedHat might be the name for Linux for most Americans and maybe the British. But in the rest of the world the other distributions have a big market share. Take "TurboLinux", they are dominating in the Asian market (especially Japan) as far as I know. Take Connectix who are well known in the Southamerican market.
This is worrisome for RedHat. And I am a stock holder so I am alert. The American market might be RedHat only with little Caldera, but the rest of the world is not so dominated. So RH should think about positioning itself better worldwide. Joining "United Linux" would probably beat the others while still maintaining a brand name.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm always surprised at how many /.ers love to whine about how terrible outsourcing is and that it makes everything worse. I'm working in a "developing country" (China) and managing for my company (European) outsourced productions. There are many problems which must be solved when outsourcing and if you don't monitor well enough then you will fail. Outsourcing mainly fails because someone doesn't think enough about it and falls for the "wow, 30% savings" trap. It's not a "we signed the contract, now where are the profits" situation.
I'm not saying that outsourcing is the cure-all as some people want to see it, but it certainly can work and then it can also provide good work to people in the home company. In our company most people are still employed and are doing the quality/project management now.
Outsourcing is an old topic (someone mentioned rightly the outsourcing that happened to the English textile sector in the 19th century). It cuts many people and they have to adjust to the new situation which is often painful.
But if the companies stop trying to be more efficient, then the US/European/Japanese economies can't compete with the new and upcoming ones (India/China). The only way to survive is to try and get higher on the skill ladder. This is true for the individual but also for an economy that wants to compete worldwide. You can't demand 5 times the price for something that can be had with the same or slightly less quality somewhere else.
Everyone wants his/her life to improve always but noone wants to accept changes to the current situation. This is not how it works.
You make it sound like the EU is one country. Last time I checked, the EU had 15 member nations.
So, it's 15 countries against 6. And I didn't know that these 6 countries are "the world" either.
the chinese are building a maglev shanghai-beijing
Check your facts.
This is such an obvious misinformed troll that I'm wondering why moderators haven't noticed it yet.
It is the US Army and US Air Force that provide stability in Europe.
Wake up. This was (partly) true in the cold war. Europe is very different now with Germany and France being the driving force behind the European union.
Europe has changed and luckily for the better part. For once people seemed to learn from history.
Try to get to know Europe before talking about something you have no clue about.
Taiwan is a democracy.
In 1989 as pro-democracy protests swept China, Taiwan held its first elections
in which parties other than the Kuomintang were allowed to stand.
The USA supported a party dictatorship (just like China still is) of fascists for pure economical reasons.
IMHO, one of the primary reasons USA is so strong in defense is because all the brains from overseas came to our country to profit from their work and flee from religious persecution.
Not the full truth. The USA is so strong in defense because:
On the military in general, the USA spends more than the rest of the G7 countries combined
Compatibility is a good thing, but who says IBM has to be PC-compatible?
Interesting comment. For a long time "PC" was equivalent with "IBM-compatible". Times have changed.
cost 299 US$ for the workstation license.
Must. Remember. To. Sell. My. Worthless. SCO. Shares.
I will even lose money selling them because of the fees, but I don't want to support anything they.
I always thought Caldera was quite decent, but SCO changed all this.
...then the tidal wave will still be 7 meters high in Shanghai.
Read this during a tour of the Three Gorges. Can you count the millions that would die?
I read about a mail forwarding service some time ago. You get a proper U.S. billing/mail address, but can live anywhere you like. They just foward it to you.
r ding.cc/
Let's see what google says:
http://www.myus.com/
http://www.mailforwa
and more...
One thing that most if not all war supporters seem to forget:
Every country and government wants to disarm Iraq and see Saddam go.
The UN inspectors said that they can disarm the Iraq in several months (9 months, I think). The world (about 190 countries) other than the "coalition of willing" (with only 3 countries sending fighting troops, how "willing" is that?) wants to disarm Iraq, but peacefully. No one likes Saddam Hussein and everybody wants to see him go, but that is not a very convincing reason for a war (there are much worse dictators/governments out there).
Actually, 'foreigner' doesn't even come close to auslander.
Where the hell have you ever heard this complete crap?
"Auslaender" is an insult? Are you out of your mind or have you spent too much time with Neo-Nazis? "Auslaender" has totally the same meaning as "foreigner" with all bad (?) and good things attached to it. Maybe spend some time there before you claim ridiculous "facts" about something you have absolutely no clue about.
Dumb troll.
You know, this is probably true. But one bad casualty of this war before it even started was that people stopped believing the US and its "coalition of willing" their facts/evidences/stories. The former faith in facts (even though people were suspicious before too) got a severe blow when it became clear that several presented facts (e.g. by Powell for god's sake, he was always seen as someone with integrity until then) were clearly wrong or misinterpreted in a very convenient way.
I'm not saying that Uday isn't a sadist and I'm not saying that this information is probably wrong, but be careful about horror stories being told when a war is going on. It's called propaganda (and it's used by all sides, but you won't hear much about the other side if you don't follow Iraqi TV).
(BTW, who is the owner of the Sydney Morning Herald? Murdoch? If yes, then chances are high that this story is pure propaganda.)
[...] we wouldn't have the problems we have with France, Germany, etc. when we ask them for help.
Oh, how I love that argument. Makes me smile about the stupidity behind it.
Translated it means:
"We have no evidence and no real reason other than that Saddam is a BAD guy (but you know that which is why you want to disarm him peacefully), but hey come on, we (forget about Russia and the other allies) saved you 60 years ago, that must be reason enough to kill thousands of innocent people! You are SOOOO ungrateful!"
Using MS' compiler has - under very special circumstances! - some advantages, e.g. if you already have code that was written for it and you also have paid for the compiler. You can maintain that code under Linux then without needing a Windows machine.
I wouldn't do it and I especially didn't think it was worthy news, but your comment missed the point in this case.
Read the introduction: "[...] This article is different because I used MS's own compiler! [...]"
Not necessarily. Outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean that you build up your own resources in India. Our mother company outsources for some years to India (and now more and more to China), but they don't own a company there, they just have a partner there.
... and didn't have the living standard we have.)
So, you can use them for projects when you need time intensive work (and actually their quality is good!). The Indian (or Chinese) partner company wins because they have well paid contracts from outside their country and the mother company wins by being competitive and not having to pay as much as domestic companies.
(On the other hand the domestic companies that offer the same services lose, but this will always be and if it wasn't, we still wouldn't eat anything other than our local food, wear local clothes,
"What's even more interesting is how many people have left Debian for Gentoo. Debian users are some of the most loyal I know, and yet many of them have simply moved on. I'm guessing Debian blew it with the long delay's between releases."
Exactly. I've been using Debian for the last 6 years and there is still nothing better for a server in my eyes. But the releases are really too slow and the "unstable" branch is sometimes just that - unstable. For my desktop I occasionally tried other distributions: RedHat, Mandrake, Suse. But none was able to come close to the ease of maintaining the system which is also important for me on my desktop. Gentoo Linux was quite a pain to install initially, but I think it has finally replaced Debian on my desktop. As a Debian user you know what's going on on your system anyway so using a source based distribution is no big problem. But you need ADSL to be happy with Gentoo.
just my 2 (euro) cents...
Who said they were comparing continents?
When talking about Europe, most people are talking about the European Union, which means they are comparing similiar population sizes and living standards.
If they compare the internet population of North America and India, do you complain that they didn't include China?
You're right though that they are too scarce on details about which countries are included.
I am writing this from Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, China. Google stopped working several days ago and still doesn't work. Going to a different IP address works though. So it might be a feeble attempt at blocking or a routing problem.
aCC
Why the hell is the parent comment modded funny??
It says the truth. Giving nations food mostly serves only one purpose (even thought not intended): destroy the local markets and make people decide not to farm, because they get the food for free.
There are exceptions, when it's a total emergency and it's for a short time, but teaching is absolutely the way to go, if you want to reduce hunger and poverty in the world.
See the announcement here
Ok, I read enough "too little, too late" comments and about how established the name of RedHat is and how "United Linux" doesn't have a chance.
I know that e.g. SuSE is the name for Linux in Germany. Most people who haven't used Linux so far connect the name "Linux" with SuSE and not RedHat.
RedHat might be the name for Linux for most Americans and maybe the British. But in the rest of the world the other distributions have a big market share. Take "TurboLinux", they are dominating in the Asian market (especially Japan) as far as I know. Take Connectix who are well known in the Southamerican market.
This is worrisome for RedHat. And I am a stock holder so I am alert. The American market might be RedHat only with little Caldera, but the rest of the world is not so dominated. So RH should think about positioning itself better worldwide. Joining "United Linux" would probably beat the others while still maintaining a brand name.