The panel all seems to agree that opening the Microsoft source would amount to taking property without compensation - a violation of the fifth amendment in the US.
Although forcing some GPL style license on Microsoft would clearly deny Microsoft the value of its intellectual property, would forcing Microsoft to publish its Windows source for the purpose of review by developers necessarily, but forbidding people to recompile and sell it, necessarily violate the Fifth Amendment?
I suppose the logical answer is that it is if the Supreme Court says so.
Still, in light of recent events, particularly the Kevin Mitnick trial, it doesn't seem all that unlikely. It would address one of the most potent means Microsoft has for extending its monopoly - the ability to hide API's from the developer community.
Mitnick was charged with stealing source code to Solaris, which Sun valued at some $80 million. However, it seems that figure raised a few eyebrows at the SEC, which demanded to know why such a large loss had not been reported to stock holders. Cleraly, Sun had not lost $80 million in revenue due to Mitnick's access to Sun's intellectual property and in the future I imagine companies will have to be more realistic in assigning value to intellectual property in these hacker trials.
It seems reasonable to think that Microsoft could be required to release those portions of the Windows source containing public API's, while denying access to other parts of the code. Or alternatively, Microsoft could be required to license its source to developers at a fixed (presumably fairly large) price for the purpose of analysing API's. Either way, the public would not have free access to a useable version of the Windows source code and Microsoft would no longer be able to hide its API's.
These kinds of terms all have precedents outside of the software business - laws fix what must be included in various kinds of contracts without violating the fifth amendment, and have been known to require businesses to make public disclosures of various kinds, even when those disclosures might reduce the value of some of their property.
...that MSNBC is about to get the ax. Apparently, it's not stealing much audience from CNN and is deep in red ink. The MSNBC website is more successful in many ways than the channel - it's certainly linked to a lot.
Perhaps this is an attept by a computer company to get control of a more relevant traditional media operation. ZDTV certainly fits Microsoft's interests (and thus Paul Allen's) better than MSNBC does.
Perhaps Paul Allen is simply setting ZDTV up to be bought by Microsoft after the anti-trust thing blows over. Certainly, it would be a public relations disaster for Microsoft to buy a TV channel now while it's in court, but control over ZDTV - directly or indirectly - makes a lot of sense for Bill Gates.
The contents of the Bible were ostensibly chosen from a variety of material in circulation in the fourth century (roughly 320 a.D. IIRC) at a coucil of bishops, shortly after Constantine converted to Christianity and theoretically abolish state religions in the Empire.
The church as it existed then bore little resemblance to modern Catholicism or any other modern sect of Christianity - blaming the Catholics isn't very accurate.
The story as I recall it is that no one could agree which books ought to be considered sacred, and which ought to be rejected. So, a whole bunch were left on a table in a closed room, and they figured God would remove those books that weren't right. Sometime later, the room was reopened and only some of the books were still on the table (the other ones being on the floor, I think) and that's how the New Testament was made.
Yeah, I have a hard time believing the story too. Certainly its remarkable how the New Testament corresponded neatly with Constantine's own theology.
But the New Testament is mostly internally consistent, and only mildly inconsistent with external information. Certainly Josephus brief mention of Christ in the Annals (although not by name) makes it hard to reject his existence outright.
As for the rest, I have no desire to debate theology on/. Please consider this a disclaimer distancing myself from any arguments for or against the existence of God, the Virgin birth or the merits of Christianity, Catholocism or any other religion.
Translation can easily become harder work than writing, and is certainly a creative endevour. It's not simply a matter of being hard, it does involve a lot beyond copying. A translation is a derivative work, not a copy. As such it requires the permission of the original author, if a valid copyright exists, but it is different from the original and as such embodies the creative labours of a translator.
Saying a translation can't enjoy a separate copyright is like saying any derivative work, like a commentary, can't have a separate copyright. That makes no sense at all.
The original texts (well, the canonical texts anyway - there are no original copies) were in circulation 1700 years ago. Copyright law allows at most 90 years after the authors' deaths. Even ignoring the pragmatic reasons, no it could never be copyrighted.
Translations are a whole different matter. The King James version is over 500 years old and thus in the public domain for the same reasons as the early texts. A number of other older Bibles are also in the public domain.
The NIV (the best of the contemporary English translations in my opinion) is copyrighted - every copy plainly states that it is licensed by The International Bible Society. The terms of use are more liberal than the standard fair use provisions (see the NIV copyright statement.)
Other modern translations have different requirements, but since Bible translators tend to do so out as a missionary calling rather than a source of income, the terms are often very liberal. A good comparison would be the World English Bible copyright or the New American Standard.
I believe there is a project to do a new, explicitly public domain translation, but I can't find their URL and I've forgotten the name.
The power of mythology derives from the archtypes it portrays, and sometimes, the archtypes need to be dusted off and portrayed in a new way. Archtypes never die, but sometimes have to be reinvented.
I discovered Gaiman and started reading Sandman about a year ago, long after he had ended the series. My reason? I saw an image of Gaiman's Death on a website, and the first thing that occured to me was "My God! I know that girl!"
My last roomate before shacking up with my permanent partner was not only the splitting image of Death as portrayed by many of Sandman's various artists (short, skinny goth girl with pitch black hair and clothes and almost bleached white skin), but had the same kind of voice. She made all the same kinds of remarks and responded to situations in awfully similar ways.
The next thing that occured to me was to wonder how many of us know someone who could pass as a character in Sandman. Although Death brought up the strongest associations for me, most of the other characters could have fit in my life at one time or another.
That is what mythology is about, and it's Sandman's great strength.
In many states, you could be required to notify a professor if you planned to record his lectures. Furthermore, once in a fixed medium, it could actually enjoy copyright. This isn't generally true for public discourses, but a college lecture isn't the same thing as a public speech - you paid to get in.
I'm not sure, but I think a verbatim copy of the lecture sold surrepticiously might be illegal, but I can't think of a case or law in particular.
Furthermore, that's not what's going on. Notes are just notes. Had I made notes from a written textbook and published them - these notes providing a summary of material and a sketch of the arguments presented - I think that usually qualifes as fair use. Certainly I have done so many, many times with academic texts without ever being challenged - so long as I plainly acknowledged my sources and avoided plagarism.
I don't think that selling notes substantially diminishes the value a professor gets out of his preparations. It does little to help other profs, except perhaps secondarily by pointing out what material other profs are covering. It is doubtful that the notes can, by themselves, substitute adequately for a class. Any class that you can pass by doing nothing but reading the notes is not a very good class to begin with.
(N.B. In the French university system when I was a kid, you could be required to take two or more classes that met at the same time. Usually, you would cut a deal with someone else in the same situation to bring you a copy of the hand-outs and their class notes. You could pass this way - but usually only for classes that were very structured and stodgy - things you should have been able to learn from video tapes or books anyway. I don't know if this true anymore - I never went back to France and my time there was more than a decade ago. I hope the system has improved - there was much good in the French system, but there was also a lot of crap.)
I've taken a look at versity.com, and the quality of notes is pretty marginal. I don't think it will interfere with marginal profs. It might actually help students with overburdened schedules - there are plenty of those. It could also help students to evaluate in advance the kinds of classes they are paying for, and determine their needs better.
True, some alcoholic frat boy may pass a few extra classes that they haven't attended because of publicly available notes - but any university where a student who has never learned the material can still get their diploma isn't a school worth paying for.
If universities want to stop this sort of activity on philosophical grounds, rather than control issues, I would advise them to begin their own websites for posting prof's notes. The prof's notes will likely be superior to any student notes and few students will bother with these private sites. Once in fixed form - even on the web - notes become fully protected by copyright.
True, a university might accidentally pass useful knowledge on to someone who has the temerity not to pay for it, but so what? A university - even a private one - exists to serve the public. They have no place handing out non-disclosure agreements like some Silicon Valley start-up. If their job isn't to propagate knowledge, they what reason should they have to exist? Besides, few students (I suspect) enroll in college to get an education - most just need an accredited paper degree to get a good job. The ones who do come to learn will probably need the classes anyway.
Besides, seeing profs put their notes on the web might lead to other profs evaluating their own performace relative to competing institutions. They would be compelled to provide more than just a droning voice for a couple of hours a week - they might actually have to add value to their lectures.
My undergrad class notes don't contain anything that hasn't been said thousands of times before by thousands of different people. If I edited them into a book and sold them, there isn't a chance in hell I'd get sued. Why sue for selling them on the web?
As for the advanced classes - most profs are adamant about getting their ideas disseminated without anything but a token payment. If some web site wants to push their ideas and properly credits them, why should it bother anyone?
Next they'll be telling me I can't teach calculus without a license from my Calc I prof. Just plain dumb.
I can't even remember where to begin to calculate the photon density in the field. If I did, I might be able to work that half out (although I'd probably get the wrong answer - seem to recall not doing that well on my quantum final either.)
The interference from a field that's parallel to the beam sure as hell won't be much. Of course at the edges it won't be parallel... I think I'll need some extra paper.
The whole reason why we talk about forces as being particles is that particles can move through a vacuum. Electromagnetism works across a vacuum because the force is carried by a particle: the photon. Radio waves do not need a medium to travel in because they are composed of photons.
"Gravitons" are what gravity particles are called. In principle, it works the same as radio, except with a different particle. Of course, there are important (and unexplained) differences between radio and gravity - that's what keeps physicists employed.
I did neglect to consider things like quantum interference, which in principle would make a difference. It would be hard to measure though unless the experiment was designed to look for it.
I once had a degree in Physics and some knowledge of the subject. Now all I've got is the degree. Any better informed physicists want to take a shot at this?
Einstein described gravity in terms of warped space/time, and the motion of particles through it as the shortest possible path through a curved space. His numbers worked (confirmed as early as the 1920's if I recall) so folks mostly bought it. Einstein hoped to express all forces as some form of curve in space, but that didn't work out for him - other forces are selective in their effects, while gravity happens to everybody.
Now, these days we tend to view things in terms of particles. The reasons are less experimental than logical. We're not talking about tiny billiard balls hurling through space, quantum mechanical particles are a little too weird for that.
Take the following well established notions:
1- Energy does not exist apart from a mass (or alternately that mass and energy are the same thing - the two statements are pretty much the same.)
2- Vacuum has no mass - it isn't a medium that can carry energy.
3- Gravity, like the other three forces, transports energy.
Given these three, we pretty much must conclude that gravity is transported by particles. It might be a particle which, like the photon, has zero rest mass, but if energy is moving through empty space, a particle, by definition, must be carrying it.
Of course, saying so doesn't answer any questions at all. Why should the action of gravity particles distort space/time? If you have a good answer and experimental data to back it up, the Nobel committee has a sizeable cash prize waiting for you.
Your magnet will have no effect. Photons have no charge, and are uninfluenced by the other photons in the magnetic field. Energy does not exist apart from mass and vacuum has no mass, so it's difficult to say that photons aren't matter. Of course, it's also semantically unimportant to distinguish between matter and energy at all.
The enhanced capabilites list brings up some questions for me. Perhaps if I had actually taken this "Future of Computing" class, they would be less ambiguous.
Unforgeable pseudonymous identities
Yes, but it will require a global standard in public/private key systems. This standard must be as stable and as universally and unquestioningly accepted as TCP/IP. It must also be backed by laws specifying the nature of the standard and describing the legal rights and responsibilities of using encrypted keys.
In a decade, maybe. The 'Net moves fast, but people don't. There's nothing technologically unfeasable about it, but it will require some changes in public attitudes.
Bidirectional, typed, filterable links
Bidirectional - yes. Should have done it years ago.
Typed - sometimes, and not very reliably. Who does the typing?
Filtered - probably not. Who gets to act as censor?
Arbitrage agents
Technologically, it can probably be made to work. Like key systems, it will take some time to do. A standard for publishing commercial information so that agents can read it is necessary. All agents must use it, and it must become so important to vendors that agents be able to read their information that they would never refuse to use the standard. This can happen - but not yet. Ten years, maybe. As much as 20 if interest in the 'Net drops off.
It's not in any vendor's best interests to help customers comparison shop. This will make it hard to implement.
Bonding agents Escrow agents
I'm not sure what these mean. Bond has several definitions, and I don't know which one applies. I know what escrow means, but I don't know what it means in this context.
Digital cash
We have it now. With all the time and money pouring into it, it'll be pretty standard soon enough.
Capability Based Security with Strong Encryption
I know what this means, but I'm not sure how it applies either.
I would be interested to see some of the answers students have given to these questions. I'm something of a net skeptic.
I'm not sure there's any obvious solution to #1.
The answer to #2 should be to call the police.
There are a number of answers to #3 - politcal science describes several methods of evaluating the reputation of an unknown agent, but most of the practical ones have been in use since before the web.
#4 is unlikely to ever have an effective technological solution, but may become cause for calling the police someday.
#5 - so what?
#6 - Your government probably isn't reading your e-mail. If it is, your inability to share dirty jokes is the least of your problems.
#7 - public/private key encryption with a protocol for challenging an identity could work for this one.
#8 - There are technological solutions, but I will bet none of them will ever be implemented.
#9 - Call a lawyer. That's what they're there for.
#10 - Sue until dead. No new technology necessary. The ability to unimpeachably establish identites using encryption might help. But speak softly and retain expensive lawyers.
#11 - I'm not sure how much he 'Net has to offer to politics - even in totalitarian states - that TV, phones and faxes don't. The 'Net does makes it a little easier to distribute samizdat, but it also makes it easier to spread propaganda. Furthermore, modern media can make it awfully hard to distinguish the two. The government of every state with free media is sooner or later compelled to lie to it - closed countries can at least keep silent. In North Korea, most people know they are being lied to, even if they don't know the truth. In America, many people suspect they are being lied to, but go on and believe what they hear anyway. The 'Net changes little in that respect.
I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to laugh my ass off at my workstation.
There seem to be a few coherent views coming out here:
1) China = communist = bad, ergo if the Chinese government likes Linux, this must be a bad thing.
2) China = communist = bad, but that has nothing to do with Linux.
3) China = big, ergo if Linux use is encouraged in China this must be a good thing.
Now, some responses to those arguments:
1) China != stupid. China contains its fair share of competent, capable people who make decisions based on the conditions as they see them. China is under pressure to reduce software piracy, at least in those sectors of the economy that they genuinely have control over. Linux comes without expensive licensing and can be copied freely. I doubt that any Linux user in China uses it for ideological reasons - the economic reasons are strong enough.
2) China's political system and economic philosophy has little to do with anything. It isn't hard to find so-called capitalist nations that have controlled about as much of their economy and repressed just as many freedoms. This doesn't excuse China for anything, but it does make the communist vs. capitalist thing an old, tired joke that we would all be best off forgetting about. What reaction would see after a similar announcement by, say, the government of Saudi Arabia, a country at least as oppressive as China and far less considerate of its working class.
3) Chinese market for computers != big. Maybe in the future the Chinese market will be so wealthy and large that its OS preferences make a major difference in the world. At the current growth rate, perhaps another 25 years will do it. In 25 years, God only knows what the computer industry will look like. I would be surprised if anything that much resembles Linux is still in use then. Until then, what OS China uses is of diminishingly little importance.
As far as I can tell, this announcement of Linux as "offical OS of the PRC" is overblown far beyond any real significance. I still can't figure out exactly what it means - I suspect it means nothing. Calling it a lie strikes me as a knee-jerk response of someone too wrapped up in his own politics to look rationally at anything. People in China aren't going to stop stealing MS Office anytime soon, I assure you.
Perhaps free software has an appeal to traditional Marxists for ideological reasons. It does to me. (I might call myself a Marxist, but only to people who I know will get pissed off because of it - few Marxists will actually have me.) "From each according to his ability, to each accroding to his need" strikes me as a better description of free software than any of the neolibertarian prattling I've heard. Certainly Marxism can be more easily twisted to explain free software than anarcho-capitalism can - as demonstrated by the logical somersaults of the open source libertarian right. But, it's probably pointless to debate the relative Marxism of Linux - Marx didn't write much about computers, so don't expect to find too much genuine insight in software development in Das Kapital.
No, watching the reaction of/.'ers is by far the most amusing part of this. Some are so taken in by their ideology that even a victory among users becomes a loss when the users aren't politically correct. A few good old "eat the bourgoisie" revolutionary leftists are still around, and their reasons for liking free software get them flamed by the very same conservatives who complain about how those "damn liberals" keep imposing their political correctness on them.
It's hard not to laugh. A word to the conservatives from an old-fashioned leftist: you are falling into the same trap that your hippie parents found. When you judge something for its ideological merits before you judge its utility, you will quickly find you've made fools of yourselves.
My mother and brother live in Winnipeg, but I hate the place - okay, I'm biased.:^)
Vacation time in Silicon Valley: if you're a contractor (as many are) there is no paid vacation time. Any unpaid time you take off is by negociation between you and your employer. At my company, you get ten paid days off, and a free paid week between Christmas and New Years. Ten paid days is the standard here, plus the official holidays.
Saskatchewan, ewww! I don't think I could take Newfoundland either, although I gather you can buy a house for under $5000 there.
I would agree that private trade is impossible to wipe out, and its probably not a good idea to try. However, since capitalism has never been allowed to run its course in any country, anywhere, at any time, (and for excellent reasons) I doubt that it would have done much for China.
The kind of mass socialisation that happened was probably necessary - the poverty of China in 1949 would never have been relieved by private investment. When a nation with natural wealth and ample human resources lives in abject poverty, socialism becomes equally hard to wipe out, and just as ill-advised to try.
Taiwan, for example, under roughly the same conditions in 1949, nationalised vast amounts property, subsidised and controlled large segments of its economy, and had as little political freedom as the PRC. We called it a capitalist nation, but it was more socialist in the early days than Cuba. Hong Kong and Singapore undertook large state-funded and controlled industrial development projects and price supports in the post war era. These economies had markets, true, but for the most part so did China - local trade was always present. And for the most part, those countries started with much greater levels of economic development and higher levels of direct foreign investment, relative to the sizes of their economies. A non-communist China could never have acquired that level of investment in that time, nor could it have developped on its own without taking just that kind of control of its industries.
It's hard to find a country with comparable circumstances and comparable improvements in standards of living that didn't resort to some form of political control of the economy. I can't think of any.
As a philosophy, Maoism leaves me cold. Even the Bolsheviks had better sense. The "One True Communism" thing is for the soft-headed. China would likely have been better for skipping the "Cultural Revolution" altogether. China probably would have been better off under a politically more liberal system, but economically, I have to question how much better they could have done, given the circumstances and information available.
Perhaps a more liberal regime for farmers in the pre-1978 era would have helped - although the contrary case could be made that modern agriculture would not have spread in China without state control, and modern agriculture is what keeps China from starving. A willingness to close inefficient industries might have helped, but given the unemployment that results, its hardly surprising that they didn't. But that's all speculation. The record in economic growth still heavily favours the communists.
I came to the US the first time when I was 9. My father was in graduate school on a student visa. Three years later, he had a Master's and had finished classwork for his PhD when he got a job offer from a public college in New Jersey. We applied for green cards.
The first year, his university and the college agreed to call his employment part of his PhD training, so he could stay on his student visa and get paid. Legally, they could only do that for a year. The second year, they gave him a loan to cover his salary, and agreed to write it off at the end of the year. I'm pretty sure that's illegal - but hey, who am I to complain. I don't know the details of the loophole they used.
The third year, about mid way through, we got our green cards. Now, this was a public college, the state dept of Ed was pressuring the INS all the way or it would have taken twice as long. This was in the middle of the Reagan years - the INS was notoriously slow.
Immigrating to Canada: I expect to go back to Canada with my soon to be wife, and American. I am told it takes about 4 months to process that kind of application and I get to do it through Employment and Immigration Canada rather than Quebec. Quebec only handles economic migration - family unification and refugees are still handled by the feds.
If you immigrate to Quebec, you have to stay in Quebec until you're a landed immigrant. You can change jobs while you wait - even if you're sponsored I think - but if you spend too much time unemployed, they kick you out.
Landed status still takes a couple of years. Quebec also usually favours French speaking immigrants, but there are exceptions, especially for those in technology.
Welcome to Canada! The winters suck, but the rest is worth it.
You know MS Office? Can you write macros in VB? If so, you are now an experienced VB programmer. Written a web page? You are an experienced web engineer, with a background in cross-browser compliant development. Ever worked in an office with both UNIX and NT? You have experience in highly hetrogenous networked environments.
Your background isn't in help desks, it's in end-user assistance. SW/HW testing, advanced software technologies, ISP management (how many users? A few thousand maybe? That'll impress them.)
Use more buzzwords! Use more abbreviations! Remember, you're an engineer!! (I hear all you guys who actually got engineering degrees snickering in the background. So what? None of you are HR people.)
Operating Systems: MacOS v6-9, Solaris/SunOS 1.x-2.x, Windows3.1, 95 and NT.
Productivity systems: MS Office, Applix, CorelOffice (name some more - if you've never used them, go to a software store and play with the demos)
Hardware: Macintosh - 680x0 and PPC-based systems, PC's - 386-Pentium III, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC. Various high-end computing platforms.
Networking systems: Server administration of: e-mail systems, AppleTalk, NetBIOS, TCP/IP, NFS, FTP and web servers...
Apply for jobs that you're not qualified for. Apply actively - posting your resume on Monster won't do it.
Don't push it too much, apply for jobs where you're pretty sure you can acquire the skills you need. Then, with a buzzword compliant resume to get you in the door, tell them at the interview that you're sure you learn quickly and expect to be on the ball in short order. Remember, it's their job to tell you you're not qualified, not yours.
It took me about a year, going through four jobs, to jump from $8/hr to about $40, and that's most of what I did. Now, at each job, I did actually learn the skills I set out to acquire there. In that year I learned to code and I learned UNIX. By the time I quit a job, I was always qualified for it.
I'm a Montrealer in exile in Mountain View (we could get a beer sometime!)
When I lived on the Plateau (five years ago), it's true that $500 would get you good housing on the Plateau - $300 in Villeray and even less in ParkEx or NDG. (I won't speak of that awful place known as Cote-des-Neiges.) I just went back and found rents were much higher. $800 is a slightly high estimate. I found apts on Rachel between St Laurent and St Denis running in the $700-$900 range. On De Lorimier, it was a couple hundred cheaper. It seems times are good on the Plateau - rents are as high there as in Outremont.
Cheap housing is still to be found in NDG. Monkland Ave is apparently where poor artists live these days.
Only people who have attended an English school in Canada, or whose parents or siblings did, can register in English schools in Quebec. (That's not Bill 101 either - it's the same for French schools outside of Quebec. Turns out this silliness is actually in the constitution.) I intended that for the non-Canadians on/., who, if they moved to Montreal, would find it practically impossible to register in an English school. The abolition of the parochial school boards doesn't change that.
Personally, that doesn't bother me, I'd like to see my kids in French school - I used to date one of the teachers at the Ecole International. Chus ben et bel bilingue, moe'! But, I can see how it might be a turn off for Americans.
I have a couple more stock disbursements coming, and since company competes directly with Microsoft, I figure the anti-trust case has to do our stock some good. Once I see that cash, and pay off the rest of my debts, I'm going to circulate my CV in Montreal. I figure somebody must be hiring UNIX techs, and I'll take the lower pay. I miss the place too - I spent a week there with my fiancee in September and she fell in love with the place. She hasn't seen it in winter yet, but what's life without some surprises?
God, I could kill for a smoked meat sandwich with poutine and a brio. I guess it must be lunchtime.:^)
In Silicon Valley, relatively inexperienced computer techs can easily pull in over US$60,000 a year. Skilled people can get $100,000 or more with fairly little trouble. (My fiancee who hasn't even finished her BA in German translation makes $53/hr as an intranet contractor here.) Regular empolyees also benifit usually from significant bonuses in stock and options.
This is certainly a lot of money in an America where median household incomes are about US$38,000/yr and most people have no significant assets. (This is only slightly better than 1979 household medians.)
However, rent here will kill you. A two bedroom apt on the Peninsula starts at $1500/mo in Mountain View or Sunnyvale and goes up to $3000 in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Studios start at $1000. Services - like eating in a restaurant - are fairly expensive. Gas is relatively expensive compared to the rest of the US ($1.60 a gallon isn't unheard of). Car insurance can be high. And commuting to work is horrible. There is no public transit worth a damn. Buses and light rail in Santa Clara county cost $1.25, $2.00 in San Mateo or to get over the Dumbarton Bridge, and $1.25 in Alameda. BART and Caltrain cost between $1.10 and $8.00 each way depending on how far you're going.
Trust me, that high salary doesn't go nearly as far as you might hope, and quality of life suffers in a lot of unexpected ways.
Entertainment in Silicon Valley: there is none. There are a few movie theatres owned by a quasi-monopoly called Century Theatres. Ticket prices are roughly US$8.50. There is a little bit of high-brow culture in the south bay, but not much and prices are high. San Francisco is better, but you can't drive there very easily and parking is a nightmare. After the first few attempts, you'll stop trying.
Fry's Electronics is perhaps the most entertaining place in the bay area.
Cable modems are available in many areas, starting at US$50/mo with US$150 to install. DSL runs around $400 to install, and about $80/mo for decent bandwidth.
If you work in tech as a regular employee, life, disability and medical insurance is usually included, and usually included a PPO option that is far better than the HMO plans that the peasants get. If you are a contractor, expect to pay a lot for an HMO plan and get poor service.
Now, Canadian tech incomes are lower, but in general no more than 20 or 30% lower. Usually, a tech job in Canada pays the same number of dollers as a comparable job in the US, but Canadian dollars are worth 23% less.
Cost of a movie ticket in Montreal is about CAN$10 (US$6.70). Rent on a two bedroom apartment in Montreal on the Plateau (artsy, yuppie area) is about CAN$800 (US$540). Montreal and Toronto offer comprehensive and rapid public transit. In Montreal a ticket costs CAN$1.25 ($US0.85) and a pass cost less that CAN$50/mo. Most Canadian cities offer at the very least comprehensive, regular bus service. In Toronto, as I understand it, prices are higher than in Montreal, and in Ottawa they are lower. Gasoline in Canada is about the same price as in California.
Quality of life issues: even Winnipeg (Canada's version of hell) has more cultural options than San Jose. Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto compare favourably with many European capitals in this respect. And you can get at least as many channels on cable in Canada as in California.
Cable modems and DSL in Canada cost about CAN$40/mo (US$27) and are available in nearly all core metropolitan areas. Restaurant prices in Montreal are roughly half (yes, 50%) of Silicon Valley prices.
Although many Canadians complain about their socialised medical services (and there are some genuine problems), they remain superior to the American HMOs I've had, and you keep your benefits even if unemployed. There is basically no paperwork when you see a physician, and you can see any doctor you choose. Most tech companies offer some form of supplimental medical insurance as a benefit - usually covering prescription and dental care which are outside normal medical coverage.
Schools in Canada are generally excellent (at least by comparison to the California public school system), and private and religious education is partially or wholly subsidised in most of Canada. Naturally, if you plan to move to Quebec, the only schools you can send your children to are in French - la vie est dure.:^) Except for Ontario, public universities are far less expensive than state schools in the United States, and quality of education is higher than the US average.
Taxes in Canada are somewhat higher than in the US, but not excessively so for those in middle income brackets. There are fewer convienient loopholes, but equivalents of the IRA and 401k are available. Taxes are considerably lower than in the UK or Ireland. (If you plan to be a billionaire, forget Canada - Bermuda is a much better choice.)
As I understand it, prices in New York and Boston are comparable to those in Silicon Valley, but Austin, Provo, Boise, Ann Arbor, Chicago and Atlanta (supposedly where the new tech companies are going) are generally much cheaper. I don't know from personal experience - I have lived in some of those places, but only many years ago. In other parts of the US, there are real bargains. A tech income in Omaha, Memphis, Houston or somewhere else well off the beaten track will probably enable you to live like a king, but I can't stand most of those places. If you can, by all means go for it.
As for me, as soon as my debts are paid off, I'm going back to Canada.
"Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without loosing an unacceptible amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."
Currently there are no products, nor are there likely to be any in the near future, that a significant percentage of consumers world-wide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs. Furthermore, no firm that does not currently market Intel-compatible PC operating systems could start doing so in a way that would, within a reasonably short period of time, present a significant percentage of consumers with a viable alternative to existing Intel-compatible PC operating systems. It follows that, if one firm controlled the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems world-wide, it could set the price of a license substantially above that which would be charged in a competitive market and leave the price there for a significant period of time without losing so many customers as to make the action unprofitable. Therefore, in determining the level of Microsoft's market power, the relevant market is the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems world-wide.
Slashdot Mirror
Still, nothing beats a nice, juicy anti-Microsoft rumour. I know Paul Allen barely pays attention to Microsoft.
The MSNBC thing, however, I heard from a not completely unreliable source.
The panel all seems to agree that opening the Microsoft source would amount to taking property without compensation - a violation of the fifth amendment in the US.
Although forcing some GPL style license on Microsoft would clearly deny Microsoft the value of its intellectual property, would forcing Microsoft to publish its Windows source for the purpose of review by developers necessarily, but forbidding people to recompile and sell it, necessarily violate the Fifth Amendment?
I suppose the logical answer is that it is if the Supreme Court says so.
Still, in light of recent events, particularly the Kevin Mitnick trial, it doesn't seem all that unlikely. It would address one of the most potent means Microsoft has for extending its monopoly - the ability to hide API's from the developer community.
Mitnick was charged with stealing source code to Solaris, which Sun valued at some $80 million. However, it seems that figure raised a few eyebrows at the SEC, which demanded to know why such a large loss had not been reported to stock holders. Cleraly, Sun had not lost $80 million in revenue due to Mitnick's access to Sun's intellectual property and in the future I imagine companies will have to be more realistic in assigning value to intellectual property in these hacker trials.
It seems reasonable to think that Microsoft could be required to release those portions of the Windows source containing public API's, while denying access to other parts of the code. Or alternatively, Microsoft could be required to license its source to developers at a fixed (presumably fairly large) price for the purpose of analysing API's. Either way, the public would not have free access to a useable version of the Windows source code and Microsoft would no longer be able to hide its API's.
These kinds of terms all have precedents outside of the software business - laws fix what must be included in various kinds of contracts without violating the fifth amendment, and have been known to require businesses to make public disclosures of various kinds, even when those disclosures might reduce the value of some of their property.
Any comments?
...that MSNBC is about to get the ax. Apparently, it's not stealing much audience from CNN and is deep in red ink. The MSNBC website is more successful in many ways than the channel - it's certainly linked to a lot.
Perhaps this is an attept by a computer company to get control of a more relevant traditional media operation. ZDTV certainly fits Microsoft's interests (and thus Paul Allen's) better than MSNBC does.
Perhaps Paul Allen is simply setting ZDTV up to be bought by Microsoft after the anti-trust thing blows over. Certainly, it would be a public relations disaster for Microsoft to buy a TV channel now while it's in court, but control over ZDTV - directly or indirectly - makes a lot of sense for Bill Gates.
The contents of the Bible were ostensibly chosen from a variety of material in circulation in the fourth century (roughly 320 a.D. IIRC) at a coucil of bishops, shortly after Constantine converted to Christianity and theoretically abolish state religions in the Empire.
/. Please consider this a disclaimer distancing myself from any arguments for or against the existence of God, the Virgin birth or the merits of Christianity, Catholocism or any other religion.
The church as it existed then bore little resemblance to modern Catholicism or any other modern sect of Christianity - blaming the Catholics isn't very accurate.
The story as I recall it is that no one could agree which books ought to be considered sacred, and which ought to be rejected. So, a whole bunch were left on a table in a closed room, and they figured God would remove those books that weren't right. Sometime later, the room was reopened and only some of the books were still on the table (the other ones being on the floor, I think) and that's how the New Testament was made.
Yeah, I have a hard time believing the story too. Certainly its remarkable how the New Testament corresponded neatly with Constantine's own theology.
But the New Testament is mostly internally consistent, and only mildly inconsistent with external information. Certainly Josephus brief mention of Christ in the Annals (although not by name) makes it hard to reject his existence outright.
As for the rest, I have no desire to debate theology on
Translation can easily become harder work than writing, and is certainly a creative endevour. It's not simply a matter of being hard, it does involve a lot beyond copying. A translation is a derivative work, not a copy. As such it requires the permission of the original author, if a valid copyright exists, but it is different from the original and as such embodies the creative labours of a translator.
Saying a translation can't enjoy a separate copyright is like saying any derivative work, like a commentary, can't have a separate copyright. That makes no sense at all.
The original texts (well, the canonical texts anyway - there are no original copies) were in circulation 1700 years ago. Copyright law allows at most 90 years after the authors' deaths. Even ignoring the pragmatic reasons, no it could never be copyrighted.
Translations are a whole different matter. The King James version is over 500 years old and thus in the public domain for the same reasons as the early texts. A number of other older Bibles are also in the public domain.
The NIV (the best of the contemporary English translations in my opinion) is copyrighted - every copy plainly states that it is licensed by The International Bible Society. The terms of use are more liberal than the standard fair use provisions (see the NIV copyright statement.)
Other modern translations have different requirements, but since Bible translators tend to do so out as a missionary calling rather than a source of income, the terms are often very liberal. A good comparison would be the World English Bible copyright or the New American Standard.
I believe there is a project to do a new, explicitly public domain translation, but I can't find their URL and I've forgotten the name.
The power of mythology derives from the archtypes it portrays, and sometimes, the archtypes need to be dusted off and portrayed in a new way. Archtypes never die, but sometimes have to be reinvented.
I discovered Gaiman and started reading Sandman about a year ago, long after he had ended the series. My reason? I saw an image of Gaiman's Death on a website, and the first thing that occured to me was "My God! I know that girl!"
My last roomate before shacking up with my permanent partner was not only the splitting image of Death as portrayed by many of Sandman's various artists (short, skinny goth girl with pitch black hair and clothes and almost bleached white skin), but had the same kind of voice. She made all the same kinds of remarks and responded to situations in awfully similar ways.
The next thing that occured to me was to wonder how many of us know someone who could pass as a character in Sandman. Although Death brought up the strongest associations for me, most of the other characters could have fit in my life at one time or another.
That is what mythology is about, and it's Sandman's great strength.
In many states, you could be required to notify a professor if you planned to record his lectures. Furthermore, once in a fixed medium, it could actually enjoy copyright. This isn't generally true for public discourses, but a college lecture isn't the same thing as a public speech - you paid to get in.
I'm not sure, but I think a verbatim copy of the lecture sold surrepticiously might be illegal, but I can't think of a case or law in particular.
Furthermore, that's not what's going on. Notes are just notes. Had I made notes from a written textbook and published them - these notes providing a summary of material and a sketch of the arguments presented - I think that usually qualifes as fair use. Certainly I have done so many, many times with academic texts without ever being challenged - so long as I plainly acknowledged my sources and avoided plagarism.
I don't think that selling notes substantially diminishes the value a professor gets out of his preparations. It does little to help other profs, except perhaps secondarily by pointing out what material other profs are covering. It is doubtful that the notes can, by themselves, substitute adequately for a class. Any class that you can pass by doing nothing but reading the notes is not a very good class to begin with.
(N.B. In the French university system when I was a kid, you could be required to take two or more classes that met at the same time. Usually, you would cut a deal with someone else in the same situation to bring you a copy of the hand-outs and their class notes. You could pass this way - but usually only for classes that were very structured and stodgy - things you should have been able to learn from video tapes or books anyway. I don't know if this true anymore - I never went back to France and my time there was more than a decade ago. I hope the system has improved - there was much good in the French system, but there was also a lot of crap.)
I've taken a look at versity.com, and the quality of notes is pretty marginal. I don't think it will interfere with marginal profs. It might actually help students with overburdened schedules - there are plenty of those. It could also help students to evaluate in advance the kinds of classes they are paying for, and determine their needs better.
True, some alcoholic frat boy may pass a few extra classes that they haven't attended because of publicly available notes - but any university where a student who has never learned the material can still get their diploma isn't a school worth paying for.
If universities want to stop this sort of activity on philosophical grounds, rather than control issues, I would advise them to begin their own websites for posting prof's notes. The prof's notes will likely be superior to any student notes and few students will bother with these private sites. Once in fixed form - even on the web - notes become fully protected by copyright.
True, a university might accidentally pass useful knowledge on to someone who has the temerity not to pay for it, but so what? A university - even a private one - exists to serve the public. They have no place handing out non-disclosure agreements like some Silicon Valley start-up. If their job isn't to propagate knowledge, they what reason should they have to exist? Besides, few students (I suspect) enroll in college to get an education - most just need an accredited paper degree to get a good job. The ones who do come to learn will probably need the classes anyway.
Besides, seeing profs put their notes on the web might lead to other profs evaluating their own performace relative to competing institutions. They would be compelled to provide more than just a droning voice for a couple of hours a week - they might actually have to add value to their lectures.
Stranger things have happened.
My undergrad class notes don't contain anything that hasn't been said thousands of times before by thousands of different people. If I edited them into a book and sold them, there isn't a chance in hell I'd get sued. Why sue for selling them on the web?
As for the advanced classes - most profs are adamant about getting their ideas disseminated without anything but a token payment. If some web site wants to push their ideas and properly credits them, why should it bother anyone?
Next they'll be telling me I can't teach calculus without a license from my Calc I prof. Just plain dumb.
Alcubierre's homepage (http://www.astro.cf.ac.u k/pub/Miguel.Alcubierre/index.html) has a broken link to the paper itself. I can't find another copy.
The New Scientist has an article about it here.
All the way to my quantum mechanics final exam.
:^)
I can't even remember where to begin to calculate the photon density in the field. If I did, I might be able to work that half out (although I'd probably get the wrong answer - seem to recall not doing that well on my quantum final either.)
The interference from a field that's parallel to the beam sure as hell won't be much. Of course at the edges it won't be parallel... I think I'll need some extra paper.
Thank God I quit physics.
The whole reason why we talk about forces as being particles is that particles can move through a vacuum. Electromagnetism works across a vacuum because the force is carried by a particle: the photon. Radio waves do not need a medium to travel in because they are composed of photons.
"Gravitons" are what gravity particles are called. In principle, it works the same as radio, except with a different particle. Of course, there are important (and unexplained) differences between radio and gravity - that's what keeps physicists employed.
I did neglect to consider things like quantum interference, which in principle would make a difference. It would be hard to measure though unless the experiment was designed to look for it.
I once had a degree in Physics and some knowledge of the subject. Now all I've got is the degree. Any better informed physicists want to take a shot at this?
Einstein described gravity in terms of warped space/time, and the motion of particles through it as the shortest possible path through a curved space. His numbers worked (confirmed as early as the 1920's if I recall) so folks mostly bought it. Einstein hoped to express all forces as some form of curve in space, but that didn't work out for him - other forces are selective in their effects, while gravity happens to everybody.
Now, these days we tend to view things in terms of particles. The reasons are less experimental than logical. We're not talking about tiny billiard balls hurling through space, quantum mechanical particles are a little too weird for that.
Take the following well established notions:
1- Energy does not exist apart from a mass (or alternately that mass and energy are the same thing - the two statements are pretty much the same.)
2- Vacuum has no mass - it isn't a medium that can carry energy.
3- Gravity, like the other three forces, transports energy.
Given these three, we pretty much must conclude that gravity is transported by particles. It might be a particle which, like the photon, has zero rest mass, but if energy is moving through empty space, a particle, by definition, must be carrying it.
Of course, saying so doesn't answer any questions at all. Why should the action of gravity particles distort space/time? If you have a good answer and experimental data to back it up, the Nobel committee has a sizeable cash prize waiting for you.
Your magnet will have no effect. Photons have no charge, and are uninfluenced by the other photons in the magnetic field. Energy does not exist apart from mass and vacuum has no mass, so it's difficult to say that photons aren't matter. Of course, it's also semantically unimportant to distinguish between matter and energy at all.
The enhanced capabilites list brings up some questions for me. Perhaps if I had actually taken this "Future of Computing" class, they would be less ambiguous.
Unforgeable pseudonymous identities
Yes, but it will require a global standard in public/private key systems. This standard must be as stable and as universally and unquestioningly accepted as TCP/IP. It must also be backed by laws specifying the nature of the standard and describing the legal rights and responsibilities of using encrypted keys.
In a decade, maybe. The 'Net moves fast, but people don't. There's nothing technologically unfeasable about it, but it will require some changes in public attitudes.
Bidirectional, typed, filterable links
Bidirectional - yes. Should have done it years ago.
Typed - sometimes, and not very reliably. Who does the typing?
Filtered - probably not. Who gets to act as censor?
Arbitrage agents
Technologically, it can probably be made to work. Like key systems, it will take some time to do. A standard for publishing commercial information so that agents can read it is necessary. All agents must use it, and it must become so important to vendors that agents be able to read their information that they would never refuse to use the standard. This can happen - but not yet. Ten years, maybe. As much as 20 if interest in the 'Net drops off.
It's not in any vendor's best interests to help customers comparison shop. This will make it hard to implement.
Bonding agents
Escrow agents
I'm not sure what these mean. Bond has several definitions, and I don't know which one applies. I know what escrow means, but I don't know what it means in this context.
Digital cash
We have it now. With all the time and money pouring into it, it'll be pretty standard soon enough.
Capability Based Security with Strong Encryption
I know what this means, but I'm not sure how it applies either.
I would be interested to see some of the answers students have given to these questions. I'm something of a net skeptic.
I'm not sure there's any obvious solution to #1.
The answer to #2 should be to call the police.
There are a number of answers to #3 - politcal science describes several methods of evaluating the reputation of an unknown agent, but most of the practical ones have been in use since before the web.
#4 is unlikely to ever have an effective technological solution, but may become cause for calling the police someday.
#5 - so what?
#6 - Your government probably isn't reading your e-mail. If it is, your inability to share dirty jokes is the least of your problems.
#7 - public/private key encryption with a protocol for challenging an identity could work for this one.
#8 - There are technological solutions, but I will bet none of them will ever be implemented.
#9 - Call a lawyer. That's what they're there for.
#10 - Sue until dead. No new technology necessary. The ability to unimpeachably establish identites using encryption might help. But speak softly and retain expensive lawyers.
#11 - I'm not sure how much he 'Net has to offer to politics - even in totalitarian states - that TV, phones and faxes don't. The 'Net does makes it a little easier to distribute samizdat, but it also makes it easier to spread propaganda. Furthermore, modern media can make it awfully hard to distinguish the two. The government of every state with free media is sooner or later compelled to lie to it - closed countries can at least keep silent. In North Korea, most people know they are being lied to, even if they don't know the truth. In America, many people suspect they are being lied to, but go on and believe what they hear anyway. The 'Net changes little in that respect.
I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to laugh my ass off at my workstation.
/.'ers is by far the most amusing part of this. Some are so taken in by their ideology that even a victory among users becomes a loss when the users aren't politically correct. A few good old "eat the bourgoisie" revolutionary leftists are still around, and their reasons for liking free software get them flamed by the very same conservatives who complain about how those "damn liberals" keep imposing their political correctness on them.
There seem to be a few coherent views coming out here:
1) China = communist = bad, ergo if the Chinese government likes Linux, this must be a bad thing.
2) China = communist = bad, but that has nothing to do with Linux.
3) China = big, ergo if Linux use is encouraged in China this must be a good thing.
Now, some responses to those arguments:
1) China != stupid. China contains its fair share of competent, capable people who make decisions based on the conditions as they see them. China is under pressure to reduce software piracy, at least in those sectors of the economy that they genuinely have control over. Linux comes without expensive licensing and can be copied freely. I doubt that any Linux user in China uses it for ideological reasons - the economic reasons are strong enough.
2) China's political system and economic philosophy has little to do with anything. It isn't hard to find so-called capitalist nations that have controlled about as much of their economy and repressed just as many freedoms. This doesn't excuse China for anything, but it does make the communist vs. capitalist thing an old, tired joke that we would all be best off forgetting about. What reaction would see after a similar announcement by, say, the government of Saudi Arabia, a country at least as oppressive as China and far less considerate of its working class.
3) Chinese market for computers != big. Maybe in the future the Chinese market will be so wealthy and large that its OS preferences make a major difference in the world. At the current growth rate, perhaps another 25 years will do it. In 25 years, God only knows what the computer industry will look like. I would be surprised if anything that much resembles Linux is still in use then. Until then, what OS China uses is of diminishingly little importance.
As far as I can tell, this announcement of Linux as "offical OS of the PRC" is overblown far beyond any real significance. I still can't figure out exactly what it means - I suspect it means nothing. Calling it a lie strikes me as a knee-jerk response of someone too wrapped up in his own politics to look rationally at anything. People in China aren't going to stop stealing MS Office anytime soon, I assure you.
Perhaps free software has an appeal to traditional Marxists for ideological reasons. It does to me. (I might call myself a Marxist, but only to people who I know will get pissed off because of it - few Marxists will actually have me.) "From each according to his ability, to each accroding to his need" strikes me as a better description of free software than any of the neolibertarian prattling I've heard. Certainly Marxism can be more easily twisted to explain free software than anarcho-capitalism can - as demonstrated by the logical somersaults of the open source libertarian right. But, it's probably pointless to debate the relative Marxism of Linux - Marx didn't write much about computers, so don't expect to find too much genuine insight in software development in Das Kapital.
No, watching the reaction of
It's hard not to laugh. A word to the conservatives from an old-fashioned leftist: you are falling into the same trap that your hippie parents found. When you judge something for its ideological merits before you judge its utility, you will quickly find you've made fools of yourselves.
My mother and brother live in Winnipeg, but I hate the place - okay, I'm biased. :^)
Vacation time in Silicon Valley: if you're a contractor (as many are) there is no paid vacation time. Any unpaid time you take off is by negociation between you and your employer. At my company, you get ten paid days off, and a free paid week between Christmas and New Years. Ten paid days is the standard here, plus the official holidays.
Saskatchewan, ewww! I don't think I could take Newfoundland either, although I gather you can buy a house for under $5000 there.
I would agree that private trade is impossible to wipe out, and its probably not a good idea to try. However, since capitalism has never been allowed to run its course in any country, anywhere, at any time, (and for excellent reasons) I doubt that it would have done much for China.
The kind of mass socialisation that happened was probably necessary - the poverty of China in 1949 would never have been relieved by private investment. When a nation with natural wealth and ample human resources lives in abject poverty, socialism becomes equally hard to wipe out, and just as ill-advised to try.
Taiwan, for example, under roughly the same conditions in 1949, nationalised vast amounts property, subsidised and controlled large segments of its economy, and had as little political freedom as the PRC. We called it a capitalist nation, but it was more socialist in the early days than Cuba. Hong Kong and Singapore undertook large state-funded and controlled industrial development projects and price supports in the post war era. These economies had markets, true, but for the most part so did China - local trade was always present. And for the most part, those countries started with much greater levels of economic development and higher levels of direct foreign investment, relative to the sizes of their economies. A non-communist China could never have acquired that level of investment in that time, nor could it have developped on its own without taking just that kind of control of its industries.
It's hard to find a country with comparable circumstances and comparable improvements in standards of living that didn't resort to some form of political control of the economy. I can't think of any.
As a philosophy, Maoism leaves me cold. Even the Bolsheviks had better sense. The "One True Communism" thing is for the soft-headed. China would likely have been better for skipping the "Cultural Revolution" altogether. China probably would have been better off under a politically more liberal system, but economically, I have to question how much better they could have done, given the circumstances and information available.
Perhaps a more liberal regime for farmers in the pre-1978 era would have helped - although the contrary case could be made that modern agriculture would not have spread in China without state control, and modern agriculture is what keeps China from starving. A willingness to close inefficient industries might have helped, but given the unemployment that results, its hardly surprising that they didn't. But that's all speculation. The record in economic growth still heavily favours the communists.
I came to the US the first time when I was 9. My father was in graduate school on a student visa. Three years later, he had a Master's and had finished classwork for his PhD when he got a job offer from a public college in New Jersey. We applied for green cards.
The first year, his university and the college agreed to call his employment part of his PhD training, so he could stay on his student visa and get paid. Legally, they could only do that for a year. The second year, they gave him a loan to cover his salary, and agreed to write it off at the end of the year. I'm pretty sure that's illegal - but hey, who am I to complain. I don't know the details of the loophole they used.
The third year, about mid way through, we got our green cards. Now, this was a public college, the state dept of Ed was pressuring the INS all the way or it would have taken twice as long. This was in the middle of the Reagan years - the INS was notoriously slow.
Immigrating to Canada: I expect to go back to Canada with my soon to be wife, and American. I am told it takes about 4 months to process that kind of application and I get to do it through Employment and Immigration Canada rather than Quebec. Quebec only handles economic migration - family unification and refugees are still handled by the feds.
If you immigrate to Quebec, you have to stay in Quebec until you're a landed immigrant. You can change jobs while you wait - even if you're sponsored I think - but if you spend too much time unemployed, they kick you out.
Landed status still takes a couple of years. Quebec also usually favours French speaking immigrants, but there are exceptions, especially for those in technology.
Welcome to Canada! The winters suck, but the rest is worth it.
You know MS Office? Can you write macros in VB? If so, you are now an experienced VB programmer. Written a web page? You are an experienced web engineer, with a background in cross-browser compliant development. Ever worked in an office with both UNIX and NT? You have experience in highly hetrogenous networked environments.
Your background isn't in help desks, it's in end-user assistance. SW/HW testing, advanced software technologies, ISP management (how many users? A few thousand maybe? That'll impress them.)
Use more buzzwords! Use more abbreviations! Remember, you're an engineer!! (I hear all you guys who actually got engineering degrees snickering in the background. So what? None of you are HR people.)
Operating Systems: MacOS v6-9, Solaris/SunOS 1.x-2.x, Windows3.1, 95 and NT.
Productivity systems: MS Office, Applix, CorelOffice (name some more - if you've never used them, go to a software store and play with the demos)
Hardware: Macintosh - 680x0 and PPC-based systems, PC's - 386-Pentium III, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC. Various high-end computing platforms.
Networking systems: Server administration of: e-mail systems, AppleTalk, NetBIOS, TCP/IP, NFS, FTP and web servers...
Apply for jobs that you're not qualified for. Apply actively - posting your resume on Monster won't do it.
Don't push it too much, apply for jobs where you're pretty sure you can acquire the skills you need. Then, with a buzzword compliant resume to get you in the door, tell them at the interview that you're sure you learn quickly and expect to be on the ball in short order. Remember, it's their job to tell you you're not qualified, not yours.
It took me about a year, going through four jobs, to jump from $8/hr to about $40, and that's most of what I did. Now, at each job, I did actually learn the skills I set out to acquire there. In that year I learned to code and I learned UNIX. By the time I quit a job, I was always qualified for it.
I'm a Montrealer in exile in Mountain View (we could get a beer sometime!)
/., who, if they moved to Montreal, would find it practically impossible to register in an English school. The abolition of the parochial school boards doesn't change that.
:^)
When I lived on the Plateau (five years ago), it's true that $500 would get you good housing on the Plateau - $300 in Villeray and even less in ParkEx or NDG. (I won't speak of that awful place known as Cote-des-Neiges.) I just went back and found rents were much higher. $800 is a slightly high estimate. I found apts on Rachel between St Laurent and St Denis running in the $700-$900 range. On De Lorimier, it was a couple hundred cheaper. It seems times are good on the Plateau - rents are as high there as in Outremont.
Cheap housing is still to be found in NDG. Monkland Ave is apparently where poor artists live these days.
Only people who have attended an English school in Canada, or whose parents or siblings did, can register in English schools in Quebec. (That's not Bill 101 either - it's the same for French schools outside of Quebec. Turns out this silliness is actually in the constitution.) I intended that for the non-Canadians on
Personally, that doesn't bother me, I'd like to see my kids in French school - I used to date one of the teachers at the Ecole International. Chus ben et bel bilingue, moe'! But, I can see how it might be a turn off for Americans.
I have a couple more stock disbursements coming, and since company competes directly with Microsoft, I figure the anti-trust case has to do our stock some good. Once I see that cash, and pay off the rest of my debts, I'm going to circulate my CV in Montreal. I figure somebody must be hiring UNIX techs, and I'll take the lower pay. I miss the place too - I spent a week there with my fiancee in September and she fell in love with the place. She hasn't seen it in winter yet, but what's life without some surprises?
God, I could kill for a smoked meat sandwich with poutine and a brio. I guess it must be lunchtime.
In Silicon Valley, relatively inexperienced computer techs can easily pull in over US$60,000 a year. Skilled people can get $100,000 or more with fairly little trouble. (My fiancee who hasn't even finished her BA in German translation makes $53/hr as an intranet contractor here.) Regular empolyees also benifit usually from significant bonuses in stock and options.
:^) Except for Ontario, public universities are far less expensive than state schools in the United States, and quality of education is higher than the US average.
This is certainly a lot of money in an America where median household incomes are about US$38,000/yr and most people have no significant assets. (This is only slightly better than 1979 household medians.)
However, rent here will kill you. A two bedroom apt on the Peninsula starts at $1500/mo in Mountain View or Sunnyvale and goes up to $3000 in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. Studios start at $1000. Services - like eating in a restaurant - are fairly expensive. Gas is relatively expensive compared to the rest of the US ($1.60 a gallon isn't unheard of). Car insurance can be high. And commuting to work is horrible. There is no public transit worth a damn. Buses and light rail in Santa Clara county cost $1.25, $2.00 in San Mateo or to get over the Dumbarton Bridge, and $1.25 in Alameda. BART and Caltrain cost between $1.10 and $8.00 each way depending on how far you're going.
Trust me, that high salary doesn't go nearly as far as you might hope, and quality of life suffers in a lot of unexpected ways.
Entertainment in Silicon Valley: there is none. There are a few movie theatres owned by a quasi-monopoly called Century Theatres. Ticket prices are roughly US$8.50. There is a little bit of high-brow culture in the south bay, but not much and prices are high. San Francisco is better, but you can't drive there very easily and parking is a nightmare. After the first few attempts, you'll stop trying.
Fry's Electronics is perhaps the most entertaining place in the bay area.
Cable modems are available in many areas, starting at US$50/mo with US$150 to install. DSL runs around $400 to install, and about $80/mo for decent bandwidth.
If you work in tech as a regular employee, life, disability and medical insurance is usually included, and usually included a PPO option that is far better than the HMO plans that the peasants get. If you are a contractor, expect to pay a lot for an HMO plan and get poor service.
Now, Canadian tech incomes are lower, but in general no more than 20 or 30% lower. Usually, a tech job in Canada pays the same number of dollers as a comparable job in the US, but Canadian dollars are worth 23% less.
Cost of a movie ticket in Montreal is about CAN$10 (US$6.70). Rent on a two bedroom apartment in Montreal on the Plateau (artsy, yuppie area) is about CAN$800 (US$540). Montreal and Toronto offer comprehensive and rapid public transit. In Montreal a ticket costs CAN$1.25 ($US0.85) and a pass cost less that CAN$50/mo. Most Canadian cities offer at the very least comprehensive, regular bus service. In Toronto, as I understand it, prices are higher than in Montreal, and in Ottawa they are lower. Gasoline in Canada is about the same price as in California.
Quality of life issues: even Winnipeg (Canada's version of hell) has more cultural options than San Jose. Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto compare favourably with many European capitals in this respect. And you can get at least as many channels on cable in Canada as in California.
Cable modems and DSL in Canada cost about CAN$40/mo (US$27) and are available in nearly all core metropolitan areas. Restaurant prices in Montreal are roughly half (yes, 50%) of Silicon Valley prices.
Although many Canadians complain about their socialised medical services (and there are some genuine problems), they remain superior to the American HMOs I've had, and you keep your benefits even if unemployed. There is basically no paperwork when you see a physician, and you can see any doctor you choose. Most tech companies offer some form of supplimental medical insurance as a benefit - usually covering prescription and dental care which are outside normal medical coverage.
Schools in Canada are generally excellent (at least by comparison to the California public school system), and private and religious education is partially or wholly subsidised in most of Canada. Naturally, if you plan to move to Quebec, the only schools you can send your children to are in French - la vie est dure.
Taxes in Canada are somewhat higher than in the US, but not excessively so for those in middle income brackets. There are fewer convienient loopholes, but equivalents of the IRA and 401k are available. Taxes are considerably lower than in the UK or Ireland. (If you plan to be a billionaire, forget Canada - Bermuda is a much better choice.)
As I understand it, prices in New York and Boston are comparable to those in Silicon Valley, but Austin, Provo, Boise, Ann Arbor, Chicago and Atlanta (supposedly where the new tech companies are going) are generally much cheaper. I don't know from personal experience - I have lived in some of those places, but only many years ago. In other parts of the US, there are real bargains. A tech income in Omaha, Memphis, Houston or somewhere else well off the beaten track will probably enable you to live like a king, but I can't stand most of those places. If you can, by all means go for it.
As for me, as soon as my debts are paid off, I'm going back to Canada.
Para 33:
"Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without loosing an unacceptible amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."
Para 18:
Currently there are no products, nor are there likely to be any in the near future, that a significant percentage of consumers world-wide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs. Furthermore, no firm that does not currently market Intel-compatible PC operating systems could start doing so in a way that would, within a reasonably short period of time, present a significant percentage of consumers with a viable alternative to existing Intel-compatible PC operating systems. It follows that, if one firm controlled the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems world-wide, it could set the price of a license substantially above that which would be charged in a competitive market and leave the price there for a significant period of time without losing so many customers as to make the action unprofitable. Therefore, in determining the level of Microsoft's market power, the relevant market is the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems world-wide.
Sorry, I've only got the first 6K.