They give $12.5 per month for 10GB transfer. I know 1gb total disk space isnt totally impressive but Ive run some seriously heavy services on a Pentium1 200MHz with 4GB disk and 64MB ram and I know I wont need one-tenth of that.
Also nice is the fact that they run squirrelmail, I planned to install that.
What bothers me are the occational reboots and 3mbit connection. Is that shared? Will I be better off running my server at home on my ADSL with 840kbps upload?
Another thing is they go against IRC servers; I have no clue why. Why not block public FTP servers, streaming audio or game servers for the bandwidth? Do IRC servers get attacked that often?
Either way the price is so nice I'll just take it for 6months or so and check it out. If nothing else, it offers remote-backup services for me.
Science has been progressing on the basis of constantly proving theories as kludges and bringing about something newer and more real. Imagine if our currently held view was true (before Standard Model), we will never be able to travel faster than light, we'll never harness energy bigger than a hydrogen bomb, we'll never really travel far beyond the Solar system, travel back in time etc.
Before the cannon was invented everyone thought the arrow was the greatest weapon, and few could really predict the power of "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Quantum Mechanics has given us so much hope, of unknown and unexplainable realities, and that far more is possible than we first thought. It means the road before us is much longer, but far more interesting. I'd prefer it that way.
Shouldnt they refer to them as "controllers in the sky on the wayward different planet"? We should use the reference of the rover when referring to it like "it turned left", which wouldnt be true if we used the reference of the "ground controllers".
Or are we firmly entrenched in the terms used when Sputnik was launched?
I had a go-kart for racing that I named firefox and applied for trademark protection. I thought firefox was unique enough and I believe the courts will stand with me on this one.
So I will have to sue these guys, in case my friends confuse a browser with my kart.
For machines with little RAM and extremely slow CPUs, this kernel kicks ass. If it can work beautifully on a 386-sx with 256MB hdd and 4MB Ram, (even 2mb if you push it), you can have embedded devices with slightly more ram using this kernel. If people can fit a tiny distro say on 64MB flash and let it run on 4MB ram, there are ARM MCUs with 4MB on board which you can gang up with 64MB flash and you'll have a linux box you can put in your ear.
All of a sudden QNX has another competition. Who knows the next Spirit or Opportunity might run Linux (although I'd strongly recommend them to use IBM microdrive and use kernel 2.4).
Notice the ssh -6? Now how many people do you know will run an ssh server as tcp6? He will have to be really interested in ipv6 and run a couple of daemons and run an ipv6 home network.
So if he's mucking with ipv6, for one hes not running critical servers and has critical data on his server that needs to be 99.999% available.
Secondly theres really not many people who would much with ipv6 in the first place.
So I think OBSD is still pretty much secure and this bug shouldnt harm OBSD's image. Bugs appear in OSes all the time and this one, with all the press its getting will do much less damage to OBSD servers around than the bugs for Windows and other Unixen will.
I do all these, simplify the init scripts and other simplification stuff just for the heck of it. Its like buying a car, you'd want to personalize it with a few trinkets here and there.
I dont think I'm the only sysadmin to simplify and strip-down the system as a way to personalize it. Gives me a good feeling and lots more confidence in the server.
I cut MY teeth on slackware. We ordered 3 CDs from infomagic, a debian, a slackware and redhat and we split it among 3 friends. Slackware was the one I could install the fastest before even learning anything about Linux.
I know its scripts inside out too, altho I just use joe and delete entire swaths of scripts I'll not need like quotas, RCS, dos ums etc. Usually I follow that with a new kernel compile to finish things up and have a real personal server.
I know them really well, but I cant really say I 'like' them best because I have an affinity of knowing all major UNIXen as much as I can, and I've been getting myself exposed to FreeBSD, Solaris, RedHat and OpenBSD quite a bit. I do head straight for the scripts though and never use linuxconf or server start apache or the likes.
I guess once you get really used to both BSD and SysV styles, it wont really matter. I have more personal preferences on window manager (twm), console type (one in which backspace/del/home/end all work), shell (bash2), init type (normal, not the damn xinit), firewall tool (openbsd pf), filesystem (xfs) and kernel compile method (BSD).
Palm OS is the OS for low-end devices with simple functions which do not require the headache of viruses/spyware/BSOD etc, and which do simple monotasking applications on budget ram and flash and no MMU.
Try to overdevelop Palm OS into a GUI layers, multitasking, and other higher end stuff, and youre directly competing with Linux, QNX, BSD and BeOS (maybe they plan to merge their BeOS with Palm on higher end). They should not want that. Linux with the community backing, applications, tools, hackibility etc will win hands down and we'll see people buying Dell machines, replacing Windows XP with Linux, getting the free PDA and replacing its PalmOS with Linux + XFree86 and its tools.
I think Palm should try to remain as simple as PalmOS 3.5 or 4.0 and instead focus more on applications. The OS should be developed to deal with more hardware, make easy-to-use SDKs to gather applications from the community and to handle nice themes. Thats all. Pretty soon someone will shrink x86 to palm size and make it consume power as little as the ARM720T, and Microsoft will rush to modify Windows XP for it, and people will just replace that with Linux. Palm will then have to rely solely on their lower end OS on even smaller devices.
There was a time when obscure objects (C++) was cool. That led to bloated designs, spending too much time on reusable code that wasnt really reused, memory leaks and of course highly unoptimised binaries.
Programming with abstract objects is no fun. Its like youre sitting on a machine and have NO clue what its gonna do with your typing. Youll be a slave to the IDE and the language. Good code comes from the pride of developers that are pefectionists, a lot like the BSD developers. They didnt develop much over a long period of time, but spent time making it perfect from the ground (hardware) up.
I enjoy developing for embedded chips for the same reason. Youre given hardware whose specs you know exactly and its functions are 100% predictable.
Giving students that same taste of robust predictibility (like flooding address A0000 in DOS DEBUG) will interest them in designing everything from the ground up all perfect and efficient. That kind of software development just happens to be far more interesting than the boring Java classes and professors.
Its just adding another layer that can get broken. This is not in the spirit of keeping it simple stupid...
Of course keeping a port closed is assuming the daemon behind it is insecure. Keep a secure daemon and thats far simpler than a port-knocking structure in the kernel.
Youre wrong. Saddam tormented his people like an average dictator, but having a foreign power come in, blow everything and completely take over is too undignified to justify it.
Always put yourself in that position to compare, for example, what if Bush turned the way of the Nixon and started repressing people(which is really happening to a few people). To get rid of him, say the Russians, Chinese or Indians invaded, dropped cluster bombs on Manhattan, wiped a few schools and churches by mistake, possibly in your neighborhood... you get the picture.
Beside the violence, I wouldnt want a foreign power to try and solve the problems of my country. If my own countrymen didnt have the motivation to get rid of the leader, I wouldnt really want the indignity of having someone else do it for me. Thats not freedom.
I may fight with a brother, but I wouldnt want to call the police and get them involved. And to rub salt, oil is being siphoned off like crazy, the only valuable resource of Iraq. With American Viceroys there, dont you think more Iraqis will see the path to freedom as suicide bombing americans and possibly doing more damage here?
And I just put in my contribution.... press F5 about 20 times just to rub it in.
We need to setup an Ad on slashdot, asking slashdoteers to contribute about 10-50 hits to microsoft.com on the eve of them releasing windows 2004 or something. Pretty enjoyable.
So after the lander fires a harpoon, the rigid comet breaks into hundereds of pieces and a single "oops" by mission control will echo around the Houston room.
Whats wrong with superglue? Still stuck with the "lets go GET it" thinking?
Rants aside. I really hope it works, and we get high res public domain pictures of it to make our desktop wallpapers out of.
I wonder if it would be cheap enough to steer the whole comet towards the earth into an orbit, and just bring it right next to the IIS. Spacewalking astronauts could then harpoon it to their hearts content
I would put two 250GB harddisk in the orbiter and make the rovers upload all data they can to the orbiter on each pass, and delete those files automatically. The slower transmission to Earth could then proceed from the disks.
Each rover uses 256MB flash and so does my 5 megapixel camera. I know for a fact that I can saturate that space fast in a photography frenzy, so I carry a laptop in the car with charger to transfer everything to it if I'll need more pictures.
Altho the two rovers have been a staggering success on Mars, I am surprised at two overlooks:
(1) Keeping track of file size and free space.
(2) What happens if the space is full.
Even Linux on a measly ARM720T does a much better job.
What a coincidence. I used the SOUND command too in QBASIC to measure and I found my maximum 17000 too (although I felt there was sound at 18 too). I never came across another programming language that made producing sounds like these so easy.
Now that they mentioned it, I can suddenly hear the hiss again, although for the past 6 years I havent noticed it and am getting close to being deaf at 15k. We have 5 monitors and 1 big TV at home, and I work IT at work so I dont really know what the lack of the hiss sounds like anymore.
Youre right. They havent crossed the petabyte yet. I cant wait till Maxtor comes out with Petabyte IDE disks, my video collection will reside on it. I'm sure theyll come out with games that will take 25% of THAT drive.
Next is the Exabyte. Whats after that?
I'm also curious why they use tapes and not just rows and rows of cheap IDE disks. Each IDE carrying 250GB at $250 will cost em $1 million plus taxes, shipping, backplane etc, and of course one full-time guy to constantly replace the failed disks with new ones. I think that should be cheaper and more reliable than mountains of tape.
Its not just one year for patching against one virus. Its the level of security and maintenance of the whole network that can resist such viruses. That means take some of the 'other' load off the IT guy, and get one who is skilled and dedicated enough to keep all important software patched, be able to provide 24/7 support and be able to block certain ports and types of traffic on quick notice. That usually means hire one IT coop student and offload the mediocre tasks to him while you focus more on the network design, security and spend time using the tools to keep a close eye.
Doing all that effectively would probably cost the employer about that much. Of course 80% of security is designing the system well and sticking to procedures like making sure antivirus software is updated. THAT doesnt cost the employer a thing.
Why must I sacrifice my job for someone from another nation?
Well see the very basis of your job is that USA has been a leader of IT since IT began. USA become the economical leader of IT because noone else was doing IT and USA could sell the Apples, Commodores and IBM PC-XTs to people everywhere including India. Thats when they farmed and paid cash to USA, to IT jobs when IT jobs were big.
Shortening things up, if you want to block import, its only fair to block export equally. USA can do things like the Softwood lumber tax on Canada only because its an economical bully and doesnt want to be on equal terms with the rest of the world. Think of the banana export issue with Europe.
Just imagine what will happen to the economy of Nevada if Nevada could import goods and buy stuff from all other states, but wasnt allowed to export anything from that state. It would economically collapse.
Exporting IT work to India is only fair in the truest sense of capitalism and is a taste of globalization. Only the government cant really block it because India and other countries have enough infrastructure to directly compete in the market with American companies if American companies stop employing their techies. Believing American software will always be of the highest quality is a mirage. Americans once thought they will always make the best cars, and look at software quality from Scandinavia.
Its OK to have an attitude of 'lets fight to keep jobs in our country', Indians have that attitude too. Its NOT going to bring your job back.
Damn you 2 are lucky, and possibly degree holders.
I dont have a college degree.
I work at a manufacturing company of about 100 people, 8 servers including one linux, one openbsd and one sco servers. Beside the workstations, cabling, PDAs, Internet connection, antispam and Domino, I take care of the ERP system, develop reports, program apps that access the database, tune the database, train everyone even work with non-IT procedures in the company.
Of course I document everything.
And I get $12 per hour in canadian dollars. Thats 25K, but take away EI, income tax, thats below 19K. Here in Toronto any reasonable crib costs $1200 in monthly rent, but I'm living with parents and contribute 50% of my pay for rent. I get no benefits, which means when I get a toothache, theres NOTHING I can do about it.
I intend to let this contract time end, and I'll ask for $18 per hour. If they offer me any less, I'll just walk out. I can make more driving a cab or painting walls. Leaving the only IT guy who knows their ERP system inside out should hit them hard, one full days downtime can cost them $80,000. Talk about pay jumps.
So let me print again what you typed above to make it ironic: "I make $50K a year and honestly they don't pay me enough for all this shit I do."
...My friend, could program a circle around 10 of the best offshore programmers you could throw at him...
This sounds a bit like contempt, maybe not prejudice, but contempt. Theres some serious skillset out there in that 5.8 billions, and Ive seen too many smart unemployer russian programmers here in Toronto defeated only by their lack of papers and good english.
Now offshoring development will hurt business for other reasons, cultural differences which cannot be reconciled despite the number of MBAs on both sides, thats different. Its not because programmers outside the USA are not too bright.
Ive a similar position for different reasons. I'm an underpaid Network Admin working towards my CCIE, after which I aim for the CISSP and other bunch of certificates. I'm in Canada and will also begin working towards learning french, something I always wanted but now have a major reason for (too many IT jobs in Canada absolutely require being fluent in both French and Eng).
But Ive kept a very close eye on microcontroller markets, their costs and abilities, the dev kits, software kits including running Linux / NetBSD on them etc, and I feel for the past 3 years, I've been more interested here than admining IP networks.
I know EE is more easily outsourced than Network administration (someone in India cant diagnose switch port problems between two ATM switches here), and that most EE jobs are kaput especially in Canada, except for the few major ones: ATI, Blackberry, Nortel. But I feel with a small group we could build something here thats sustainable, and we could outsource manufactuing, yet keep us designers employed here.
I'll keep my interest in ASICs and EE, and will work for possibly the safest IT position: network/system administration until the market changes if it ever does. Boy do I envy those developers in China churning out those megapixel cameras for cheap. Things are booming there and they have so many opportunities to do interesting things.
Its amazing how we've got satellites and rovers covering Mars at various locations. Its pretty different from the very first Viking landing. We can see the soft sand around Opportunity, the marks the rovers airbags made, and that there arent any martians running around, at least for now.
The <a href=http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_DigitalImage s.htm>Venus landings</a> were more surprising to me because I thought we never landed on Venus. I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury. The temp there is actually cooler than on Venus, and the lack of atmosphere will make it more like the moon.
Or maybe its time to start desiging spacecraft and robots to try and land/splash on Jupiter. Given the gravity, temperature, radio/radiation noise etc. we might not even be able currently to pull that off.
For a Digital camera or another device that should eventually cost below $99, I can understand a kernel that is 30k and doesnt need 4MB RAM to boot. But we're talking about Spirit, and at least Intel sells a 8-mbit flash with tiny BGA footprint, more bits per gram regardless of price.
Given two exactly similar OSes with differing kernel sizes I'd choose the simpler smaller one which will inevitably be more robust. I guess NASA ran into the same problem owners of cheap USB memory sticks run into all the time. Flash filesystems are still immature compared to standard Linux/BSD filesystems. I think Spirit has become negative advertisement for Windriver.
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Holy crap thats cheap!
They give $12.5 per month for 10GB transfer. I know 1gb total disk space isnt totally impressive but Ive run some seriously heavy services on a Pentium1 200MHz with 4GB disk and 64MB ram and I know I wont need one-tenth of that.
Also nice is the fact that they run squirrelmail, I planned to install that.
What bothers me are the occational reboots and 3mbit connection. Is that shared? Will I be better off running my server at home on my ADSL with 840kbps upload?
Another thing is they go against IRC servers; I have no clue why. Why not block public FTP servers, streaming audio or game servers for the bandwidth? Do IRC servers get attacked that often?
Either way the price is so nice I'll just take it for 6months or so and check it out. If nothing else, it offers remote-backup services for me.
Now I wonder..
Science has been progressing on the basis of constantly proving theories as kludges and bringing about something newer and more real. Imagine if our currently held view was true (before Standard Model), we will never be able to travel faster than light, we'll never harness energy bigger than a hydrogen bomb, we'll never really travel far beyond the Solar system, travel back in time etc.
Before the cannon was invented everyone thought the arrow was the greatest weapon, and few could really predict the power of "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Quantum Mechanics has given us so much hope, of unknown and unexplainable realities, and that far more is possible than we first thought. It means the road before us is much longer, but far more interesting. I'd prefer it that way.
Shouldnt they refer to them as "controllers in the sky on the wayward different planet"? We should use the reference of the rover when referring to it like "it turned left", which wouldnt be true if we used the reference of the "ground controllers".
Or are we firmly entrenched in the terms used when Sputnik was launched?
I had a go-kart for racing that I named firefox and applied for trademark protection. I thought firefox was unique enough and I believe the courts will stand with me on this one.
So I will have to sue these guys, in case my friends confuse a browser with my kart.
For machines with little RAM and extremely slow CPUs, this kernel kicks ass. If it can work beautifully on a 386-sx with 256MB hdd and 4MB Ram, (even 2mb if you push it), you can have embedded devices with slightly more ram using this kernel. If people can fit a tiny distro say on 64MB flash and let it run on 4MB ram, there are ARM MCUs with 4MB on board which you can gang up with 64MB flash and you'll have a linux box you can put in your ear.
All of a sudden QNX has another competition. Who knows the next Spirit or Opportunity might run Linux (although I'd strongly recommend them to use IBM microdrive and use kernel 2.4).
Heres what I saw in the advisory:
ping6 openbsd
ssh -6 openbsd
Notice the ssh -6? Now how many people do you know will run an ssh server as tcp6? He will have to be really interested in ipv6 and run a couple of daemons and run an ipv6 home network.
So if he's mucking with ipv6, for one hes not running critical servers and has critical data on his server that needs to be 99.999% available.
Secondly theres really not many people who would much with ipv6 in the first place.
So I think OBSD is still pretty much secure and this bug shouldnt harm OBSD's image. Bugs appear in OSes all the time and this one, with all the press its getting will do much less damage to OBSD servers around than the bugs for Windows and other Unixen will.
I do all these, simplify the init scripts and other simplification stuff just for the heck of it. Its like buying a car, you'd want to personalize it with a few trinkets here and there.
I dont think I'm the only sysadmin to simplify and strip-down the system as a way to personalize it. Gives me a good feeling and lots more confidence in the server.
I cut MY teeth on slackware. We ordered 3 CDs from infomagic, a debian, a slackware and redhat and we split it among 3 friends. Slackware was the one I could install the fastest before even learning anything about Linux.
I know its scripts inside out too, altho I just use joe and delete entire swaths of scripts I'll not need like quotas, RCS, dos ums etc. Usually I follow that with a new kernel compile to finish things up and have a real personal server.
I know them really well, but I cant really say I 'like' them best because I have an affinity of knowing all major UNIXen as much as I can, and I've been getting myself exposed to FreeBSD, Solaris, RedHat and OpenBSD quite a bit. I do head straight for the scripts though and never use linuxconf or server start apache or the likes.
I guess once you get really used to both BSD and SysV styles, it wont really matter. I have more personal preferences on window manager (twm), console type (one in which backspace/del/home/end all work), shell (bash2), init type (normal, not the damn xinit), firewall tool (openbsd pf), filesystem (xfs) and kernel compile method (BSD).
Just get used to everything and be a Unix guru.
Palm OS is the OS for low-end devices with simple functions which do not require the headache of viruses/spyware/BSOD etc, and which do simple monotasking applications on budget ram and flash and no MMU.
Try to overdevelop Palm OS into a GUI layers, multitasking, and other higher end stuff, and youre directly competing with Linux, QNX, BSD and BeOS (maybe they plan to merge their BeOS with Palm on higher end). They should not want that. Linux with the community backing, applications, tools, hackibility etc will win hands down and we'll see people buying Dell machines, replacing Windows XP with Linux, getting the free PDA and replacing its PalmOS with Linux + XFree86 and its tools.
I think Palm should try to remain as simple as PalmOS 3.5 or 4.0 and instead focus more on applications. The OS should be developed to deal with more hardware, make easy-to-use SDKs to gather applications from the community and to handle nice themes. Thats all. Pretty soon someone will shrink x86 to palm size and make it consume power as little as the ARM720T, and Microsoft will rush to modify Windows XP for it, and people will just replace that with Linux. Palm will then have to rely solely on their lower end OS on even smaller devices.
There was a time when obscure objects (C++) was cool. That led to bloated designs, spending too much time on reusable code that wasnt really reused, memory leaks and of course highly unoptimised binaries.
Programming with abstract objects is no fun. Its like youre sitting on a machine and have NO clue what its gonna do with your typing. Youll be a slave to the IDE and the language. Good code comes from the pride of developers that are pefectionists, a lot like the BSD developers. They didnt develop much over a long period of time, but spent time making it perfect from the ground (hardware) up.
I enjoy developing for embedded chips for the same reason. Youre given hardware whose specs you know exactly and its functions are 100% predictable.
Giving students that same taste of robust predictibility (like flooding address A0000 in DOS DEBUG) will interest them in designing everything from the ground up all perfect and efficient. That kind of software development just happens to be far more interesting than the boring Java classes and professors.
Its just adding another layer that can get broken. This is not in the spirit of keeping it simple stupid...
Of course keeping a port closed is assuming the daemon behind it is insecure. Keep a secure daemon and thats far simpler than a port-knocking structure in the kernel.
I see ACPI in the list of changes in every release. I thought this was functional maybe around the beginning of 2.4.
Can someone comment why this is taking so long to mature, or are they keeping up with all new hardware released.
Youre wrong. Saddam tormented his people like an average dictator, but having a foreign power come in, blow everything and completely take over is too undignified to justify it.
Always put yourself in that position to compare, for example, what if Bush turned the way of the Nixon and started repressing people(which is really happening to a few people). To get rid of him, say the Russians, Chinese or Indians invaded, dropped cluster bombs on Manhattan, wiped a few schools and churches by mistake, possibly in your neighborhood... you get the picture.
Beside the violence, I wouldnt want a foreign power to try and solve the problems of my country. If my own countrymen didnt have the motivation to get rid of the leader, I wouldnt really want the indignity of having someone else do it for me. Thats not freedom.
I may fight with a brother, but I wouldnt want to call the police and get them involved. And to rub salt, oil is being siphoned off like crazy, the only valuable resource of Iraq. With American Viceroys there, dont you think more Iraqis will see the path to freedom as suicide bombing americans and possibly doing more damage here?
And I just put in my contribution.... press F5 about 20 times just to rub it in.
We need to setup an Ad on slashdot, asking slashdoteers to contribute about 10-50 hits to microsoft.com on the eve of them releasing windows 2004 or something. Pretty enjoyable.
So after the lander fires a harpoon, the rigid comet breaks into hundereds of pieces and a single "oops" by mission control will echo around the Houston room.
Whats wrong with superglue? Still stuck with the "lets go GET it" thinking?
Rants aside. I really hope it works, and we get high res public domain pictures of it to make our desktop wallpapers out of.
I wonder if it would be cheap enough to steer the whole comet towards the earth into an orbit, and just bring it right next to the IIS. Spacewalking astronauts could then harpoon it to their hearts content
I would put two 250GB harddisk in the orbiter and make the rovers upload all data they can to the orbiter on each pass, and delete those files automatically. The slower transmission to Earth could then proceed from the disks.
Each rover uses 256MB flash and so does my 5 megapixel camera. I know for a fact that I can saturate that space fast in a photography frenzy, so I carry a laptop in the car with charger to transfer everything to it if I'll need more pictures.
Altho the two rovers have been a staggering success on Mars, I am surprised at two overlooks:
(1) Keeping track of file size and free space.
(2) What happens if the space is full.
Even Linux on a measly ARM720T does a much better job.
What a coincidence. I used the SOUND command too in QBASIC to measure and I found my maximum 17000 too (although I felt there was sound at 18 too). I never came across another programming language that made producing sounds like these so easy.
Now that they mentioned it, I can suddenly hear the hiss again, although for the past 6 years I havent noticed it and am getting close to being deaf at 15k. We have 5 monitors and 1 big TV at home, and I work IT at work so I dont really know what the lack of the hiss sounds like anymore.
Youre right. They havent crossed the petabyte yet. I cant wait till Maxtor comes out with Petabyte IDE disks, my video collection will reside on it. I'm sure theyll come out with games that will take 25% of THAT drive.
Next is the Exabyte. Whats after that?
I'm also curious why they use tapes and not just rows and rows of cheap IDE disks. Each IDE carrying 250GB at $250 will cost em $1 million plus taxes, shipping, backplane etc, and of course one full-time guy to constantly replace the failed disks with new ones. I think that should be cheaper and more reliable than mountains of tape.
Its not just one year for patching against one virus. Its the level of security and maintenance of the whole network that can resist such viruses. That means take some of the 'other' load off the IT guy, and get one who is skilled and dedicated enough to keep all important software patched, be able to provide 24/7 support and be able to block certain ports and types of traffic on quick notice. That usually means hire one IT coop student and offload the mediocre tasks to him while you focus more on the network design, security and spend time using the tools to keep a close eye.
Doing all that effectively would probably cost the employer about that much. Of course 80% of security is designing the system well and sticking to procedures like making sure antivirus software is updated. THAT doesnt cost the employer a thing.
Why must I sacrifice my job for someone from another nation?
Well see the very basis of your job is that USA has been a leader of IT since IT began. USA become the economical leader of IT because noone else was doing IT and USA could sell the Apples, Commodores and IBM PC-XTs to people everywhere including India. Thats when they farmed and paid cash to USA, to IT jobs when IT jobs were big.
Shortening things up, if you want to block import, its only fair to block export equally. USA can do things like the Softwood lumber tax on Canada only because its an economical bully and doesnt want to be on equal terms with the rest of the world. Think of the banana export issue with Europe.
Just imagine what will happen to the economy of Nevada if Nevada could import goods and buy stuff from all other states, but wasnt allowed to export anything from that state. It would economically collapse.
Exporting IT work to India is only fair in the truest sense of capitalism and is a taste of globalization. Only the government cant really block it because India and other countries have enough infrastructure to directly compete in the market with American companies if American companies stop employing their techies. Believing American software will always be of the highest quality is a mirage. Americans once thought they will always make the best cars, and look at software quality from Scandinavia.
Its OK to have an attitude of 'lets fight to keep jobs in our country', Indians have that attitude too. Its NOT going to bring your job back.
Damn you 2 are lucky, and possibly degree holders.
I dont have a college degree.
I work at a manufacturing company of about 100 people, 8 servers including one linux, one openbsd and one sco servers. Beside the workstations, cabling, PDAs, Internet connection, antispam and Domino, I take care of the ERP system, develop reports, program apps that access the database, tune the database, train everyone even work with non-IT procedures in the company.
Of course I document everything.
And I get $12 per hour in canadian dollars. Thats 25K, but take away EI, income tax, thats below 19K. Here in Toronto any reasonable crib costs $1200 in monthly rent, but I'm living with parents and contribute 50% of my pay for rent. I get no benefits, which means when I get a toothache, theres NOTHING I can do about it.
I intend to let this contract time end, and I'll ask for $18 per hour. If they offer me any less, I'll just walk out. I can make more driving a cab or painting walls. Leaving the only IT guy who knows their ERP system inside out should hit them hard, one full days downtime can cost them $80,000. Talk about pay jumps.
So let me print again what you typed above to make it ironic:
"I make $50K a year and honestly they don't pay me enough for all this shit I do."
...My friend, could program a circle around 10 of the best offshore programmers you could throw at him...
This sounds a bit like contempt, maybe not prejudice, but contempt. Theres some serious skillset out there in that 5.8 billions, and Ive seen too many smart unemployer russian programmers here in Toronto defeated only by their lack of papers and good english.
Now offshoring development will hurt business for other reasons, cultural differences which cannot be reconciled despite the number of MBAs on both sides, thats different. Its not because programmers outside the USA are not too bright.
Ive a similar position for different reasons. I'm an underpaid Network Admin working towards my CCIE, after which I aim for the CISSP and other bunch of certificates. I'm in Canada and will also begin working towards learning french, something I always wanted but now have a major reason for (too many IT jobs in Canada absolutely require being fluent in both French and Eng).
But Ive kept a very close eye on microcontroller markets, their costs and abilities, the dev kits, software kits including running Linux / NetBSD on them etc, and I feel for the past 3 years, I've been more interested here than admining IP networks.
I know EE is more easily outsourced than Network administration (someone in India cant diagnose switch port problems between two ATM switches here), and that most EE jobs are kaput especially in Canada, except for the few major ones: ATI, Blackberry, Nortel. But I feel with a small group we could build something here thats sustainable, and we could outsource manufactuing, yet keep us designers employed here.
I'll keep my interest in ASICs and EE, and will work for possibly the safest IT position: network/system administration until the market changes if it ever does. Boy do I envy those developers in China churning out those megapixel cameras for cheap. Things are booming there and they have so many opportunities to do interesting things.
Its amazing how we've got satellites and rovers covering Mars at various locations. Its pretty different from the very first Viking landing. We can see the soft sand around Opportunity, the marks the rovers airbags made, and that there arent any martians running around, at least for now.
e s.htm>Venus landings</a> were more surprising to me because I thought we never landed on Venus. I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury. The temp there is actually cooler than on Venus, and the lack of atmosphere will make it more like the moon.
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Or maybe its time to start desiging spacecraft and robots to try and land/splash on Jupiter. Given the gravity, temperature, radio/radiation noise etc. we might not even be able currently to pull that off.
For a Digital camera or another device that should eventually cost below $99, I can understand a kernel that is 30k and doesnt need 4MB RAM to boot. But we're talking about Spirit, and at least Intel sells a 8-mbit flash with tiny BGA footprint, more bits per gram regardless of price.
Given two exactly similar OSes with differing kernel sizes I'd choose the simpler smaller one which will inevitably be more robust. I guess NASA ran into the same problem owners of cheap USB memory sticks run into all the time. Flash filesystems are still immature compared to standard Linux/BSD filesystems. I think Spirit has become negative advertisement for Windriver.