Everyone in the UK is finding it hard, and the rise of the Indian and Eastern European software industries have virtually obliterated the contractor market here.
Europe used to be a good place, what with many companies having English as the company language. However too many idiots abused the various local tax systems and got caught and now a foreign language (or 2 in Belgium) is an almost automatic requirement, meaning that you at least have to be a naturalised resident and preferrably a citizen.
In short, I'm screwed when it comes to getting a job. Even when applying for the permanent ones I rarely get an answer.
Given that your media is controlled by a few mega-corps who basically choose who you're able to vote for, I'd say your media is controlled by the government, just not by their puppet Dubya.
I don't much like JCL, but I have to say something, having had to deal with it's successors, the myriad of different and badly documented Unix text files and the Windows registry - it's consistent and well-documented and when it fails you get an error message that always enables you to solve the problem.
If there is no competition for the desktop the whole computer industry will be killed off.
Not so. Microsoft don't want to own the whole software industry, just the underlying parts. In this interest it created Office, IE and Windows Media, in order to remove, or at least sideline, cross-platform competition in important areas.
I agree with you, though, that a viable competitor to Windows on the x86 desktop is required to prevent more of the above, and that Bob Young should recognise that, at least in terms of safeguarding his newly-profitable company's expanding marketshare.
And you believe that.NET will allow you to do this on anything but a win32/64 platform? Some.NET functionality may exist on other platforms, but the API will be closed and only available to Windows (and possibly Mac) users, and therefore no more cross-platform than win32.
The reason Microsoft is doing this is to allow quicker migration from older platforms, to avoid the fiasco of trying to merge the Win9x/NT codebases, which is a good thing from the point of view of Microsoft and their users, but is largely irrelevant to those of us that don't want to use Windows for whatever reason.
Java already fills the niche for cross-platform apps,.NET is just a way for Microsoft to more quickly abandon its mistakes without having to lose compatibility. And before the many Java-haters start banging on about Java being slow, do you think a.NET app would be any faster? Only marginally at best.
I've got this problem as well, and after a bit of superficial checking out, the problem appears to be that the Real Player plugin helper isn't registering itself correctly with Netscape, calling itself rpnp.so, instead of Real something or other. Since the detection routine is expecting a string containing 'Real' it fails. I had a look on the Real plugin forum and some users have already noticed this, but there's no word on a solution yet.
Lots of rebuffering unfortunately. The 300K stream, when it gets going is quite nice, but the 100K is pretty dismal in both sound and audio quality.
Having just done a traceroute, there isn't really a bottleneck, so I really need a faster connection, something that the UK providers aren't yet willing to offer at an affordable price for the home consumer.
I would be quite happy to use the service, though, should I ever get the chance of a fatter pipe, as, all things considered, it's a damn sight better than either video stores or p2p piracy.
And don't scream about not being able to save it locally. Why would you want to?
Some of us don't have super-fast internet connections like you seem to have. I've got 512Kbps cable and streaming video is pretty poor on it, however, downloading the stream while I'm at work to watch it in the evening is a viable option.
A transvestite is a person who prefers to wear the clothing of the opposite sex, but is no different to any other human. A hermaphrodite is a person born with both male and female organs, and these people are exceedingly rare (and usually sorted out by surgery very early on).
And how would a CEO sell that one to the shareholders/venture capitalists. 'We're going to spend several billion dollars on a mission that might not succeed, trying to establish if there's any way of making money out there'. Much easier to just be a NASA contractor and get paid, regardless of the mission's success.
This is an often-touted excuse for not having WINE. OS/2 failed because of Microsoft's per-CPU licensing schemes. No-one would buy OS/2 when they had already paid for Windows.
Perhaps you should remember that Office apps supported their competitors' file formats in order to speed migration. That is what WINE is about and is an excellent idea.
The whole thing that keeps Microsoft in front of Linux is the applications barrier to entry that Windows currently enjoys. Remove that and Windows ceases to be the only option and will start to lose ground.
Slashdot Mirror
govt should be able to regulate as long as you agree with it...
Isn't that sort of the point of an elected government?
At least slightly deranged, judging by my very infrequent visits to Japanese restaurants ;-)
Yes, but in 1993 there wasn't an Indian software industry to speak of. These jobs won't come back, they'll stay over there.
Everyone in the UK is finding it hard, and the rise of the Indian and Eastern European software industries have virtually obliterated the contractor market here.
Europe used to be a good place, what with many companies having English as the company language. However too many idiots abused the various local tax systems and got caught and now a foreign language (or 2 in Belgium) is an almost automatic requirement, meaning that you at least have to be a naturalised resident and preferrably a citizen.
In short, I'm screwed when it comes to getting a job. Even when applying for the permanent ones I rarely get an answer.
Given that your media is controlled by a few mega-corps who basically choose who you're able to vote for, I'd say your media is controlled by the government, just not by their puppet Dubya.
I don't much like JCL, but I have to say something, having had to deal with it's successors, the myriad of different and badly documented Unix text files and the Windows registry - it's consistent and well-documented and when it fails you get an error message that always enables you to solve the problem.
Spare us the three year old arguments please. Compilation of the Linux kernel has not been necessary for at least that length of time.
It is an option, that's all.
Could you please provide specific examples of South African communists in positions of power?
If there is no competition for the desktop the whole computer industry will be killed off.
Not so. Microsoft don't want to own the whole software industry, just the underlying parts. In this interest it created Office, IE and Windows Media, in order to remove, or at least sideline, cross-platform competition in important areas.
I agree with you, though, that a viable competitor to Windows on the x86 desktop is required to prevent more of the above, and that Bob Young should recognise that, at least in terms of safeguarding his newly-profitable company's expanding marketshare.
And you believe that .NET will allow you to do this on anything but a win32/64 platform? Some .NET functionality may exist on other platforms, but the API will be closed and only available to Windows (and possibly Mac) users, and therefore no more cross-platform than win32.
The reason Microsoft is doing this is to allow quicker migration from older platforms, to avoid the fiasco of trying to merge the Win9x/NT codebases, which is a good thing from the point of view of Microsoft and their users, but is largely irrelevant to those of us that don't want to use Windows for whatever reason.
Java already fills the niche for cross-platform apps, .NET is just a way for Microsoft to more quickly abandon its mistakes without having to lose compatibility. And before the many Java-haters start banging on about Java being slow, do you think a .NET app would be any faster? Only marginally at best.
I've got this problem as well, and after a bit of superficial checking out, the problem appears to be that the Real Player plugin helper isn't registering itself correctly with Netscape, calling itself rpnp.so, instead of Real something or other. Since the detection routine is expecting a string containing 'Real' it fails. I had a look on the Real plugin forum and some users have already noticed this, but there's no word on a solution yet.
404 Not Found, dammit.
Lots of rebuffering unfortunately. The 300K stream, when it gets going is quite nice, but the 100K is pretty dismal in both sound and audio quality.
Having just done a traceroute, there isn't really a bottleneck, so I really need a faster connection, something that the UK providers aren't yet willing to offer at an affordable price for the home consumer.
I would be quite happy to use the service, though, should I ever get the chance of a fatter pipe, as, all things considered, it's a damn sight better than either video stores or p2p piracy.
And don't scream about not being able to save it locally. Why would you want to?
Some of us don't have super-fast internet connections like you seem to have. I've got 512Kbps cable and streaming video is pretty poor on it, however, downloading the stream while I'm at work to watch it in the evening is a viable option.
Only uncivilised countries like the US base their medical system on how much people can afford.
A transvestite is a person who prefers to wear the clothing of the opposite sex, but is no different to any other human. A hermaphrodite is a person born with both male and female organs, and these people are exceedingly rare (and usually sorted out by surgery very early on).
Yes, but Columbus was funded by the government. Queen Isabella of Spain was the one that funded his voyage.
Most of the problems on this planet have been solved, it's the willingness of humans to actually apply the solutions that is the problem.
And how would a CEO sell that one to the shareholders/venture capitalists. 'We're going to spend several billion dollars on a mission that might not succeed, trying to establish if there's any way of making money out there'. Much easier to just be a NASA contractor and get paid, regardless of the mission's success.
Yes, shock horror, we still wouldn't support SMP properly.
Take a chill pill man.
This is an often-touted excuse for not having WINE. OS/2 failed because of Microsoft's per-CPU licensing schemes. No-one would buy OS/2 when they had already paid for Windows.
Perhaps you should remember that Office apps supported their competitors' file formats in order to speed migration. That is what WINE is about and is an excellent idea.
AFAIK it doesn't support USB, unless they've added it in the last few days.
The whole thing that keeps Microsoft in front of Linux is the applications barrier to entry that Windows currently enjoys. Remove that and Windows ceases to be the only option and will start to lose ground.
This site looks like it's got a fair few useful links.