Indians with any talent get the hell out of India. You will never get good employees by outsourcing to India, because good employees won't accept a lifestyle of disease, pollution, and waist-high piles of garbage everywhere while earning $5/hour.
Want to hire talented Indians? Look for them in Europe or North America.
the security industry has failed to protect paying customers from some of today's most pernicious threats
This is a terribly ignorant statement. The security has actually succeeded in protecting paying customers from all but the most pernicious threats. IT security is about reducing risk, and that's what it does--successfully.
March 2nd, eh? So you're saying that offline play has only worked properly for a single week of Steam's existence?
That is not at all impressive. And even then, I'm skeptical. Steam's nasty DRM has kept me from playing the games I own far too many times over the past two years.
If someone comes up with a Steam-like game-delivery platform without the DRM, Steam will die a quick death.
First world: Democratic Capitalism (the US and its allies)
Second world: Stalinist Communism (the USSR and its allies)
Third world: Unallied countries (because they were so far behind, nobody wanted to go near them)
Though the Second world never matched the First world's wealth, it did at least have schools, plumbing, and the basics of modern life. In the Third world, even today, a simple stroll around town will have you walking over waist-deep piles of trash and shit... so be nice to your Bangalore colleagues. They have real problems to deal with in their lives.
You simply don't have much experience with Steam, then. Search the Steam forums if you don't believe me. Steam server outages can leave your client in a state that makes all your Steam games unplayable, even in offline mode. This just happened again last week.
Steam is DRM. When Steam goes down, you can't play your games... not even when you're offline. Just last week there was an outage that made all Steam games unplayable for an entire evening. And many games you buy on Steam will install additional DRM alongside Steam.
Valve is making some awesome PC games, at good prices, and with a good delivery platform. But don't forget that this all comes at the cost of some nasty DRM which is nearly as bad as the recent Ubisoft fiasco.
Awesome. There will be an entire new population of n00bs for me to pwn. And these aren't just any noobs--they've never even been exposed to a real FPS experience of any sort. Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
The most important factor is cost. It will have to be fantastically cheap to manufacture and distribute this if you want to sell it to people who subsist on $0.10 of rice per day. People who are used to flinging poo out the windows of their shacks will probably be perplexed by the idea of paying to take a dump.
And yes, I have dodged chamber pots in India. Prepare to be depressed if you ever visit the third world:-/
When a magnetic field is applied to the solders [they heat up]
Not to be pedantic, but this is the Internet... They are applying magnetic flux to their solder, not just a magnetic field. A field doesn't impart any energy.
Agreed entirely. Inefficiency is an inherent property of all old organizations. And it's more expensive to convert old processes to new technology than it is to design new processes from the ground-up.
However, this isn't an insurmountable problem. Trends like "Service-Oriented Architecture" allow for the modernization of old processes in a piecewise fashion: each component in a process exposes an interface via XML/HTTP for interacting with the other components. What happens behind those interfaces can be *anything* in any language or even on paper (at first). This subverts the huge one-time cost of designing a monolithic system which encompasses the entire process.
Bluetooth headsets, and to a lesser extent keyboards and mice, all suffer from noticeable lag. This makes BT devices worthless for gaming and video, and damn annoying for everything else.
A low-lag Bluetooth is needed before it will replace USB.
Cloud computing is simply the name given to the virtualization and SaaS trends. It is a real phenomenon, so why not let it have a one-syllable name? I mean, we could call it "Utility-IT" or "virtual outsourced hosting services" or any of several terms which are slightly more descriptive, but such names certainly aren't any better.
In my opinion, "cloud computing" is a pretty decent name for scalable, on-demand, utility-billed IT services. At least it's not another acronym!
What we have been talking about here is either using it for DR plans, or for letting remote users with cheap thinclients (say nettop+linux+rdp/x/nx/vnc) access managed (by us) virtual desktops which have all their data plus our software, backups, reliability, and security.
Bonus: if the nettop/netbook is stolen, NO data is lost, as it never leaves our servers (in persistent form, at least).
If I had to guess, I would say the e-ink display is the biggest cost, followed by the battery. CPUs, Flash, RAM, and wireless chips are commodities at this point. E-ink and ultra-compact batteries are not.
The WTO is certainly among the lesser evils. In the old-old days, when the uber-wealthy wanted to protect their property rights, they had to hire mercenaries. It was cruel, but at least it was honest.
Later in history, the developments of religion and nationalism enabled those on top to use mere rhetoric to convince the poor to die protecting business interests. Protect the King's land from the godless invaders! Fly under the stars and stripes to defend the fruit company's interests in the banana republics!
With the advent of conscription, however, those who owned the world could merely summon slaves to make sure their property remained under their control (Korea, Vietnam).
But the Owners didn't entirely control the new phenomenon of mass media, and popular opinion turned. Slavery wasn't an option, so we tried espionage (CIA) and even old-school mercenaries (Gulf War I) to protect businesses interests .
The uber-rich aren't going to stop trying to protect "their" property, but with the Internet turning media upside-down, it will be harder than ever to get the poor to agree to conscription, crusades or even merc work. Using trade embargoes via the WTO is probably better than outright war for this purpose, so long as they don't embargo to the point of mass starvation.
(For the record: I'm not anti-capitalist. Humanity just sucks when it comes to war and money. A progressive capitalism in which you can get rich but you can't take it with you [high inheritance tax to fund education of the poor] sounds most appealing to me.)
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Indians with any talent get the hell out of India. You will never get good employees by outsourcing to India, because good employees won't accept a lifestyle of disease, pollution, and waist-high piles of garbage everywhere while earning $5/hour.
Want to hire talented Indians? Look for them in Europe or North America.
The real unemployment rate, which measures the number of people who are looking for jobs but can't find jobs, is under 10%.
Your claim that it is "approaching 20%" is a lie.
And no, you can't just make up your own definitions of words. I know this is the Internet, but try to have some integrity, Maxo-Texas.
This is a terribly ignorant statement. The security has actually succeeded in protecting paying customers from all but the most pernicious threats. IT security is about reducing risk, and that's what it does--successfully.
If this hasn't happened yet, it's because you don't pray hard enough.
Agreed. Throw in a smart card chip, too. let me use it for banking transactions.
You are trying to avoid the point. Steam keeps people from playing their games offline. You are dishonest.
How do you explain the recent Steam server outage that left games lists blank, and the offline option broken?
Any way you spin it, that's DRM keeping you from playing your games offline.
All games. I said all games. I meant all games. The "My Games" list went BLANK during the server outage, even if you disconnected your net connection.
March 2nd, eh? So you're saying that offline play has only worked properly for a single week of Steam's existence?
That is not at all impressive. And even then, I'm skeptical. Steam's nasty DRM has kept me from playing the games I own far too many times over the past two years.
If someone comes up with a Steam-like game-delivery platform without the DRM, Steam will die a quick death.
Eastern Europe is technically the "second world."
Though the Second world never matched the First world's wealth, it did at least have schools, plumbing, and the basics of modern life. In the Third world, even today, a simple stroll around town will have you walking over waist-deep piles of trash and shit... so be nice to your Bangalore colleagues. They have real problems to deal with in their lives.
My facts are correct. You are simply lucky that you were impacted differently than so many others. You were the exception to the rule.
You can only activate "offline" mode by first going online... which is impossible when Steam is down.
You simply don't have much experience with Steam, then. Search the Steam forums if you don't believe me. Steam server outages can leave your client in a state that makes all your Steam games unplayable, even in offline mode. This just happened again last week.
Offline mode works, but only sometimes.
Steam is DRM. When Steam goes down, you can't play your games... not even when you're offline. Just last week there was an outage that made all Steam games unplayable for an entire evening. And many games you buy on Steam will install additional DRM alongside Steam.
Valve is making some awesome PC games, at good prices, and with a good delivery platform. But don't forget that this all comes at the cost of some nasty DRM which is nearly as bad as the recent Ubisoft fiasco.
Awesome. There will be an entire new population of n00bs for me to pwn. And these aren't just any noobs--they've never even been exposed to a real FPS experience of any sort. Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Mwuhahahaha... Dominating!
The most important factor is cost. It will have to be fantastically cheap to manufacture and distribute this if you want to sell it to people who subsist on $0.10 of rice per day. People who are used to flinging poo out the windows of their shacks will probably be perplexed by the idea of paying to take a dump.
And yes, I have dodged chamber pots in India. Prepare to be depressed if you ever visit the third world :-/
That's not what "double jeopardy" means at all.
Not to be pedantic, but this is the Internet... They are applying magnetic flux to their solder, not just a magnetic field. A field doesn't impart any energy.
Agreed entirely. Inefficiency is an inherent property of all old organizations. And it's more expensive to convert old processes to new technology than it is to design new processes from the ground-up.
However, this isn't an insurmountable problem. Trends like "Service-Oriented Architecture" allow for the modernization of old processes in a piecewise fashion: each component in a process exposes an interface via XML/HTTP for interacting with the other components. What happens behind those interfaces can be *anything* in any language or even on paper (at first). This subverts the huge one-time cost of designing a monolithic system which encompasses the entire process.
No, reasearchers find side-channel attack on SPARC CPU (which requires elevated access, anyway).
Bluetooth headsets, and to a lesser extent keyboards and mice, all suffer from noticeable lag. This makes BT devices worthless for gaming and video, and damn annoying for everything else.
A low-lag Bluetooth is needed before it will replace USB.
Cloud computing is simply the name given to the virtualization and SaaS trends. It is a real phenomenon, so why not let it have a one-syllable name? I mean, we could call it "Utility-IT" or "virtual outsourced hosting services" or any of several terms which are slightly more descriptive, but such names certainly aren't any better.
In my opinion, "cloud computing" is a pretty decent name for scalable, on-demand, utility-billed IT services. At least it's not another acronym!
What we have been talking about here is either using it for DR plans, or for letting remote users with cheap thinclients (say nettop+linux+rdp/x/nx/vnc) access managed (by us) virtual desktops which have all their data plus our software, backups, reliability, and security.
Bonus: if the nettop/netbook is stolen, NO data is lost, as it never leaves our servers (in persistent form, at least).
Unlikely. All e-Ink products cost $200+.
If I had to guess, I would say the e-ink display is the biggest cost, followed by the battery. CPUs, Flash, RAM, and wireless chips are commodities at this point. E-ink and ultra-compact batteries are not.
The WTO is certainly among the lesser evils. In the old-old days, when the uber-wealthy wanted to protect their property rights, they had to hire mercenaries. It was cruel, but at least it was honest.
Later in history, the developments of religion and nationalism enabled those on top to use mere rhetoric to convince the poor to die protecting business interests. Protect the King's land from the godless invaders! Fly under the stars and stripes to defend the fruit company's interests in the banana republics!
With the advent of conscription, however, those who owned the world could merely summon slaves to make sure their property remained under their control (Korea, Vietnam).
But the Owners didn't entirely control the new phenomenon of mass media, and popular opinion turned. Slavery wasn't an option, so we tried espionage (CIA) and even old-school mercenaries (Gulf War I) to protect businesses interests .
The uber-rich aren't going to stop trying to protect "their" property, but with the Internet turning media upside-down, it will be harder than ever to get the poor to agree to conscription, crusades or even merc work. Using trade embargoes via the WTO is probably better than outright war for this purpose, so long as they don't embargo to the point of mass starvation.
(For the record: I'm not anti-capitalist. Humanity just sucks when it comes to war and money. A progressive capitalism in which you can get rich but you can't take it with you [high inheritance tax to fund education of the poor] sounds most appealing to me.)