How much would it cost for me to put together a system with the same computing power, using off-the-shelf products, like a Xeon chip, or something? How long would it take for me to save $1 million in electricity, or whatever?
Microsoft is the greedy evil company we think they are, and then some.
Patent bullying, funding the scox scam, astro-turfing, fake TCO studies, fake benchmarking studies, outright lying to the US congress about difficulty of removing msie from windows, outright lying to the EU about difficulty of removing media player from windows, the OOXML scam, having Washington taxpayers pay for $11 million bridge on MS campus. Firing thousands of US workers, and hiring h1bs to replace the US workers, and all the while crying to US congress about the desperate shortages of US workers.
I could go on. But you could probably learn more here:
At a company of about 20,000 full-time employees, there were at last count fewer than 200 formally enrolled Greyglers working to "make Google culture... welcome to people of all ages."
MS wants more H1B visas, true, but you're completely misrepresenting the reason. They aren't getting rid of US engineering jobs, they're expanding (even in a down market) faster than they can find qualified Americans to fill those jobs.
Do you work for MS, or do you actually believe that bullshit? US techies were laid off by the hundreds of thousands last year. Massive layoffs were everywhere. And now you want us to believe that there are no unemployed US techies. Yeah, right.
I could introduce you to a woman who was forced to train her h1b replacement twice, then lost her last job because her work was offshored. I was working for Sun when they offshored my entire department.
There is no shortage of US techies, that has been proven many time. The only people who claim such shortages, are those with an agenda.
Enjoy training your H1B replacement, or having your job offshored.
Just to let you know: everybody thinks it will never happen to them. I have worked in IT for 30 years. I hear it all the time: "I'm much too valuable, they could never hire a foreign worker to do what I do."
Want proof? Go to google and enter "2009 microsoft layoffs" without quotes. Then look up MS H1B hiring in the same year. Then lookup all times Gates has testified before congress about the desperate shortages of US tech workers, even while MS was laying off US tech workers by the thousands, and MS was hiring H1Bs and offshoring US jobs at a furious pace. All while the US is suffering it's worse unemployment since the great depression.
Gates complains about smart Americans all going to Wall Street instead of R&D. But Gates has gone before the US congress, many times, and argued that even more US tech workers should lose their jobs to H1B visa workers.
Just last year, even as Microsoft was firing US tech workers by the thousands, Microsoft was simultaneously hiring their H1B replacements.
Due to the situation that Gates himself has helped create, smart Americans would be stupid to train for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) jobs.
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
1973 Honda Civic rated 35/40 mpg 1986 VW Golf Diesel rated 31/40 mpg * 1989 Geo Metro was rated 43/51 mpg 1989 Honda CRX-HF was rated 41/50 mpg 1992 Ford Festiva rated 30/37 mpg
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
Related:
57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains.
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive.
A US company can hire an H1B even when a US worker is available. This happens all the time. US workers are frequently required to train their H1B replacements.
This has a very harsh "chilling effect" on aspiring tech workers. Why train for a job when you're just going to replaced by a cheaper H1B?
Indian staffing companies are reporting record profits. When US politicians smell windfall profits, it's just like when sharks smell blood in the water.
When there is money to be had, the US politicians will think up some excuse to get their cut. Remember Godfather II? The way things worked in the old neighborhood, when you made a score, the local Don had an automatic right to "wet his beak." The same system was portrayed in that Goodfellas movie.
07/23/2010
> Indian software services provider Wipro said quarterly profit jumped 31 percent to 13.19 billion rupees ($284 million), beating expectations, as India's No. 3 outsourcer ramped up staffing to meet stronger global demand.
> Revenue for the April-June quarter rose 16 percent over the same period last year to 72.36 billion rupees ($1.56 billion) under international accounting standards.
> A Thomson Reuters poll of 23 analysts forecast quarterly profit of 12.15 billion rupees.
> "We are seeing strong demand... across our industry," chairman Azim Premji said in a statement Friday. "We added the highest number of billable employees ever, in this quarter."
I've done countless comparisons of Macs to comparable Lenovo's, Dells, HPs, etc. For comparably equivalent machines, (sames size LED backlit IPS panel, same HD size and speed, same bus, memory, processor, bluetooth, camera, etc, etc) with comparable software (that generally means Win 7 Home Ultimate) Macs are, generally, 10% to 20% more, and not way overpriced.
As I understand it, those sorts of comparisons are flawed. Macs use old hardware, and old hardware is more expensive. It is actually fairly easy to get a PC to out-spec a Mac for about 50% of the cost of the Mac.
As I understand it, the original receipt, or the recovery disk, is proof that your Windows OS is legal. The COA sticker does not prove anything, as far as the BSA is concerned.
Where are you shopping that you're finding new paperbacks below $5.99 each? Airport paperbacks tend to start out at $6.99 and go up from there
Why pick nits? The grandfather post made an excellent point. I see lots of tech books on Amazon that cost $37 for the regular book, and $32 for the kindle edition. And I can buy a used edition for $15.
So why spend $140 to $390 on a kindle, if it also raises the cost of the book?
So this is a nine year old product, ancient in computer years, and a security, and standards disaster.
It's great to see the government trying to save some money, but is there not a point of diminishing returns? Newer software may not work that well on msie6.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, everybody here likes the Star Trek TOS. But really, is that great acting?
I like some Schwarzenegger movies, but I've never considered him a great actor either.
How much would it cost for me to put together a system with the same computing power, using off-the-shelf products, like a Xeon chip, or something? How long would it take for me to save $1 million in electricity, or whatever?
All of those companies have an OS that uses a similar shutdown.
Microsoft is the greedy evil company we think they are, and then some.
Patent bullying, funding the scox scam, astro-turfing, fake TCO studies, fake benchmarking studies, outright lying to the US congress about difficulty of removing msie from windows, outright lying to the EU about difficulty of removing media player from windows, the OOXML scam, having Washington taxpayers pay for $11 million bridge on MS campus. Firing thousands of US workers, and hiring h1bs to replace the US workers, and all the while crying to US congress about the desperate shortages of US workers.
I could go on. But you could probably learn more here:
http://techrights.org/?stories
Related:
2010-06-21:
At Google, You're Old and Gray At 40
At a company of about 20,000 full-time employees, there were at last count fewer than 200 formally enrolled Greyglers working to "make Google culture... welcome to people of all ages."
http://gawker.com/5568975/at-google-youre-old-and-gray-at-40
2008-06-22:
New York Times Article about Age Discrimination
"In an industry survey, a majority of technology companies candidly said they would not hire anyone over 40."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/weekinreview/22lohr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin%3Cbr%20/%3E
MS wants more H1B visas, true, but you're completely misrepresenting the reason. They aren't getting rid of US engineering jobs, they're expanding (even in a down market) faster than they can find qualified Americans to fill those jobs.
Do you work for MS, or do you actually believe that bullshit? US techies were laid off by the hundreds of thousands last year. Massive layoffs were everywhere. And now you want us to believe that there are no unemployed US techies. Yeah, right.
I could introduce you to a woman who was forced to train her h1b replacement twice, then lost her last job because her work was offshored. I was working for Sun when they offshored my entire department.
There is no shortage of US techies, that has been proven many time. The only people who claim such shortages, are those with an agenda.
Enjoy training your H1B replacement, or having your job offshored.
Just to let you know: everybody thinks it will never happen to them. I have worked in IT for 30 years. I hear it all the time: "I'm much too valuable, they could never hire a foreign worker to do what I do."
Pride before the fall.
As I understand Norm Matloff, the H1B was originally created to drive down salaries of US scientists.
Nice attempt at an ad-hoc argument.
Want proof? Go to google and enter "2009 microsoft layoffs" without quotes. Then look up MS H1B hiring in the same year. Then lookup all times Gates has testified before congress about the desperate shortages of US tech workers, even while MS was laying off US tech workers by the thousands, and MS was hiring H1Bs and offshoring US jobs at a furious pace. All while the US is suffering it's worse unemployment since the great depression.
Oppose any immigration, or visa, policy, and there is a 100% certainty that those trying to take US jobs will trot out the same Bullshit.
Gates complains about smart Americans all going to Wall Street instead of R&D. But Gates has gone before the US congress, many times, and argued that even more US tech workers should lose their jobs to H1B visa workers.
Just last year, even as Microsoft was firing US tech workers by the thousands, Microsoft was simultaneously hiring their H1B replacements.
Due to the situation that Gates himself has helped create, smart Americans would be stupid to train for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) jobs.
Maybe so. I can not really say because I never tried PrestaShop.
No offense, but if Magento is "way better" then PrestaShop must seriously suck.
Taxing income, from whatever source, is fine. But having a special tax on a blog, just because it's a blog, seems to defy the 1st amendment.
As I understand it, the T-Rex project in Denver cost $1.67 billion. And the denver light rail is practically useless, it covers very little of Denver.
And now they are going to cover the entire nation for $8 billion? That doesn't seem to add up.
I bought my 92 ford festiva used 10 years ago, for $700. Never had any major problems, and I get over 40mpg.
Tell me where I can a hybrid that will be cheaper to run?
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/5263.shtml
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
http://www.greencar.com/features/fuel-economy/
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3958376.ece
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
1973 Honda Civic rated 35/40 mpg
1986 VW Golf Diesel rated 31/40 mpg *
1989 Geo Metro was rated 43/51 mpg
1989 Honda CRX-HF was rated 41/50 mpg
1992 Ford Festiva rated 30/37 mpg
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
Related:
57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago
Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/17/autos/honda_civic_hf/index.htm
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso
A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7387432.stm
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage
Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive.
http://hi-mpg.org/best-cars-with-high-gas-mileage.phtml
A US company can hire an H1B even when a US worker is available. This happens all the time. US workers are frequently required to train their H1B replacements.
This has a very harsh "chilling effect" on aspiring tech workers. Why train for a job when you're just going to replaced by a cheaper H1B?
Aren't we supposed to keep repeating that?
Indian staffing companies are reporting record profits. When US politicians smell windfall profits, it's just like when sharks smell blood in the water.
When there is money to be had, the US politicians will think up some excuse to get their cut. Remember Godfather II? The way things worked in the old neighborhood, when you made a score, the local Don had an automatic right to "wet his beak." The same system was portrayed in that Goodfellas movie.
07/23/2010
> Indian software services provider Wipro said quarterly profit jumped 31 percent to 13.19 billion rupees ($284 million), beating expectations, as India's No. 3 outsourcer ramped up staffing to meet stronger global demand.
> Revenue for the April-June quarter rose 16 percent over the same period last year to 72.36 billion rupees ($1.56 billion) under international accounting standards.
> A Thomson Reuters poll of 23 analysts forecast quarterly profit of 12.15 billion rupees.
> "We are seeing strong demand ... across our industry," chairman Azim Premji said in a statement Friday. "We added the highest number of billable employees ever, in this quarter."
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_15586063
If you have actually used it, then when? There have been a firmware upgrades that have made a big difference.
Actually, I very much doubt that you have used it, or if you have, if you are giving it a fair review.
Take a look at the demos on youtube. The device is really not that bad at all.
It is certainly capable for watching movies, reading books, listening to music, etc.
Here is an android 2.1 7" wifi device for $149.
http://www.walgreens.com/store/catalog/Electronics/Novel-7-inch-Color-Multimedia-eReader/ID=prod6021970-product?V=G&ec=frgl_&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=sku6020686
I've done countless comparisons of Macs to comparable Lenovo's, Dells, HPs, etc. For comparably equivalent machines, (sames size LED backlit IPS panel, same HD size and speed, same bus, memory, processor, bluetooth, camera, etc, etc) with comparable software (that generally means Win 7 Home Ultimate) Macs are, generally, 10% to 20% more, and not way overpriced.
As I understand it, those sorts of comparisons are flawed. Macs use old hardware, and old hardware is more expensive. It is actually fairly easy to get a PC to out-spec a Mac for about 50% of the cost of the Mac.
As I understand it, the original receipt, or the recovery disk, is proof that your Windows OS is legal. The COA sticker does not prove anything, as far as the BSA is concerned.
Where are you shopping that you're finding new paperbacks below $5.99 each? Airport paperbacks tend to start out at $6.99 and go up from there
Why pick nits? The grandfather post made an excellent point. I see lots of tech books on Amazon that cost $37 for the regular book, and $32 for the kindle edition. And I can buy a used edition for $15.
So why spend $140 to $390 on a kindle, if it also raises the cost of the book?
According to wikipedia:
Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Internet_Explorer_6
So this is a nine year old product, ancient in computer years, and a security, and standards disaster.
It's great to see the government trying to save some money, but is there not a point of diminishing returns? Newer software may not work that well on msie6.