You are partly right. Manufacturing might go offshore, but historically, the US has done the new technology thing well. It's happened in the past.
Look at the Automobile (one of your examples)...
The US began the mass production of the Auto (Ford)... US companies develop the technology...create the V8, Seat Belts, Increase Speed, etc... Japanese companies come along in the 70's with cheap, fuel effecient cars...just when we need it...the US companies refused to change until it was too late. In the 80's you see purchases/mergers (Ford buys Mazda, etc)...US companies begin outsourcing to Mexico & Canada...
In the 90's many ppl began to own Toyotas, Hondas, etc... Now you have the uniquely American SUV, American companies like Saturn and Chrysler (now Daimler-Chrysler) trying to develop a market...and interestingly enough, some of those Manufacturing and R&D jobs (even Japanese companies) are returning to the US...Toyota has both R&D and Manufacturing facilities in the US.
One thing has remained true all along the way...the good ppl in R&D stay in the industry and Maintanence remains here.
One thing is for sure...your small, specialized and in-house coding jobs and administration will stay here. A small company, School, City, etc can't afford to outsource a couple of jobs. Just like TV repairmen, Auto Mechanics, and custom performance modifications, these will remain well paying for the forseeable future.
I meant that the PeeCee is a "one-hit wonder" in respects to the top 10 list...
It's not an exact science...but the truth is, your argument supports my theory...there ARE more consoles out there, which means that this list reflects reality to an extent. If the list were dominated by 1 console, then it may be biased...but the list looks to be a pretty good sampling of what ppl are playing and as such, it should also give us a good sampling of just what systems they are playing them on...
It's obvious from the odd M$ figures, the XBox had the lowest sales...why else would they mix figures...someone had to tell em "But Sony and Nintendo gave us numbers, not percentages"...you can bet that if they outsold even Nintendo they'ld want everyone to know...from these figures, the XBox was probably outsold by the NGage:)
Of course, this is how things were last year as well...noone has released any new hardware in the set-top arena and the PS2 has got a few more tricks up its sleeves since last year...what would be interesting to see is how much of Nintendo and Sony's sales were XBox owners...
Wanna see how the real figures probably work out...just look at GameFAQs' Top Games...this is a telling list, it tells you exactly what ppl are playing right now...
In the top 10, it looks like we have 7 PS2 games, 1 PC game (highest of the "one hit wonders"), 1 Nintendo game, and 1 XBox game (almost didn't make it on the top 10)...
Which sounds about right for what I've seen as well...
Good, now how about a port of Colem (the colecovision emulator)...this console would be perfect for a handheld...
The colecovision had 16 colors, low quality sound (by todays standards), low resolution, and low rom sizes (16 to 32kbytes)...
By comparison, the C= 64 had a hybrid Analog/Digital sound chip (SID), support for add-on hardware, paddles, joysticks, flight controllers, mice, and larger applications (180 to 320 kbytes)...
The earlier game consoles just make more sense to emulate on a handheld...
The part about this story that gets to me is that the researcher didn't alert Microsoft before posting to a public mailing list.
Why should he? Would M$ show the same courtesy if it were a bug in Mozilla or Linux? What about the open source public reporting method? Hasn't that worked out? Isn't it better to let ppl know in advance that there's a bug that should be dealt with...
I would argue that just because it's proprietary software doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated the same as open source...the argument could be made that M$ doesn't have nearly as much developers as the larger open source projects, and I'ld have to agree...as a matter of fact, I think M$ should probably hire some more coders to deal with their shortage...maybe even help the job market some.
The truth is, M$ should be able to at least release info on a work around in a couple of days...and if there's no way to create a work around, maybe they need to rethink their how their code is setup...
Isn't that kinda like potholes on state roads...even though you might not hit one today, you know there's alot of em out there...and boy does it suck when you find one...
Until M$ removes IE's death clutch on the OS (read never), there will always be bugs that cause havoc with the OS.
OS-Browser integration was the worse idea since Bob!!! (another M$ "innovation")
Because some ppl are still running 2.4 in production environments...the headline is actually kinda wrong...the kernel will actually have new releases...they will just be maintanence releases...only, no new drivers, etc...just bug fixes...
For instance, there was a new release of the 2.2 kernel as early as March of this year.
802.11b is not new technology. By now it's commodity hardware. THe oly ppl employed by making 802.11b technology are manual laborers... Americans are not good at making things cheaper (it's the whole cost of living thing)...
Americans make things faster or better...
Americans are innovators, the rest of the world takes the technology and makes it cheaper...it's been this way since international trade has existed.
Americans should be busy working on making wireless better, not making commodity technology...it's the only way we've stayed ahead of the curve in the past...
I used to be a full-blown/\miga Fanatic... I was eventually forced to switch to a PeeCee after C= died and it wqaqs obvious that there would not be another Amiga (still have my Amiga 2000).
But imagine my frustration when I switched from a 14MHz Amiga to a Pentium 166 MMX (best at the time)...
Switching from a Realtime OS with a *NIX style CLI to a POS (M$ Win*) was a major problem for me. I had become used to the system responding at my command (something I enjoyed after having to deal with my first computer...a C= 64) and using the many advantages of the *NIX command line...
Of course, Linux now has the new preempt patch in the 2.6 kernel which makes me extremely happy...
When was the last time you knew of a group (people or otherwise) to follow a predetermined set of rules outside of the lab??? It's around us every day...then again, I guess the RIAA planed for CDs to lead to massive digital piracy...
And if you say that doesn't count, then I don't want you developing any drugs I'm going to be taking...
There's a huge gap between modeling an enzyme and developing a drug inside of a computer...how do you know when a new pain medicine adversely effects the liver?
While I want to belive what you say, I must point out that you are making a mistake. This puzzle is purely logical (mechanical)...the things you mention (market economics and human-drug interaction) are organic in nature...
Computers are good at doing mechanical computations, but we have yet to perfect computation of organic systems...as a matter of fact, some would say it's impossible.
If you ever read the book or watched the show Connections, you'ld know that this could be said for every invention dating all the way back to the plow...
Yea, you'd think so, but foreign relations have a way of working this kind of thing out...maybe we use it as a negotiating tool...or maybe we pressure other countries to impose restrictions...it all works out in the end.
SGI doesn't really have to advertise, as their primary market already knows who they are...their problem is related to their price compared to the much cheaper companies out there. SGI should really stick to making really good CG workstations. They have their most competency in this niche market and shouldn't look at going into other markets until they recover their strongest one.
Like it or not, SGI can help you if you have a problem with your render farm, but they wouldn't know crap about helping you fix your database (ok, this is a little harsh, but you get the point).
It's almost like saying M$ knows how to do a good server OS:)
I see what you're saying too, but sadly, I just haven't seen this. The good managers tend to not be too tech savy...
I think the tech savy managers get ideas about how stuff should be implimented and end up running the show, which means you get a bunch of guys working in the one way that won't get them fired which means they also make the same skrew-ups that would never have been made if they had a say. And even a technical interview just can't get you past a good BSer...
Sadly, many of the managers within IBM tend to be of 2 types...good manager, no technical abilities...and bad manager, good techie...problem is given the choice, I would rather work for the former. A good manager knows how to listen to their ppl and can at least try to keep them happy...Not all fall into one of these groups...I've worked for all 4...
Bad Manager, Bad Techie (the worst kind) Good Manager, Bad Techie (like I said, they know how to deal with people and extract the info they need) Bad Manager, Good Techie (Regardless of their technical abilities a bad manager is still a bad manager.) And my favorite... Good Manager, Good Techie (These guys never stay in one place for a long time...they tend to be on their way to the top and bigger paychecks won't keep em in a lower position.)
Dell has Intel religion, no matter what. Serious whitebox sticker slappers. Also, are they moving too much support to India?
Sadly, management and bean counters (the ones that generally end up having the final say in what servers are bought) don't care about this...that's why they hired sysadmins they say...and here's a clue for you...IBM is one of the biggest offshore outsourcers...especially to IBM India...
SGI has serious marketing problems.
No, SGI has serious market problems. they can no longer sell hugely expensive workstations to hollywood studios. They have seen their market shift from selling proprietary workstations/servers with a proprietary *NIX (IRIX) to commodity intel hardware with high end GFX cards running Linux. They were forced to change their market strategy because their customers began shifting to Linux. Lucky for them they started to offer Linux machines before their market disappeared. Their problem is they have to compete with the likes of IBM, Dell, and HP/Compaq in the x86 Linux market and they're being asked to do it on a much tighter budget than they ever had...
Now, Sun is starting to see the same thing happen. Their primary market (scientific research) is starting to see a shift to Linux and they are left with a proprietary *NIX that is behind AIX in almost every way. Solaris 9 is a good step in the right direction, but they still don't have a good JFS!!!
Yes, but the problem with IBM and their new Linux jobs is that most managers are trying to get by with hiring Linux personel at the same costs as Windoze personel. Trust me, I know (don't ask, can't tell)...
The problem with Linux becoming mainstream is that Linux (and as a result *NIX) knowledge is starting to become more widespread and therefore less of a commodity...
I think you will start to see more Linux positions, but they will be paying much less than before...
Of course, as always it is my opinion that the real good ppl will still be paid highly, they will just have to take on more jobs or more demanding positions...
$500 or so as a bonus, an extra day or 2 vacation at christmas time, a $100 - $200 gift for each employee, maybe throw a small holiday party for your employees and their families at a nice local hotel(where you could present their gifts and bonus checks as well as announce extra vacation time for employees). And make sure to put some away for the future.
You would know better what your employees would appreciate. 5 employees are easy to please...try pleasing 200+ employees...
By making sure to spend a little in a few different ways, each of your employees will find some benefit in the way you have spent the money. This also requires you to do a bit more work than a gift or bonus alone, but it will likely not go unnoticed.
Nasty crashes in Wine have a tendency to cause X crashes. Somehow I doubt that logging you out of X (probably same as CTRL+ALT+BackSpace) was the intended effect. The reason this happens (just a WAG) is that Wine is integrated with X to an extent that a crash in Wine can cause problems in X. The fix for this would be to simply back off on the integration with X, but then the apps wouldn't be as responsive as they are now...
So you want to run outlook on Linux (you must have your reasons, I wouldn't)...
Wine can use any directory in Linux as a drive, so you simply create an outlook directory, run it in its own environment which means that the only problems you will see are those brought about by the application. As even a virus in Wine will happily run in a contained environment.
When you want to send an attachment from another app, you simply copy or make a symlink using your favorite Linux tools.
As far as bugs in Outlook, if you have problem with those, then maybe you should rethink your choice in e-mail clients.
The only way for a Windoze virus to compromise a Linux system would be to exploit a vulnerability in Wine...and since you should be running apps as an unprivleged user, no problems...not to menton that any exploit in Wine would probably simply result in a crash of the app.
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You are partly right. Manufacturing might go offshore, but historically, the US has done the new technology thing well. It's happened in the past.
Look at the Automobile (one of your examples)...
The US began the mass production of the Auto (Ford)... US companies develop the technology...create the V8, Seat Belts, Increase Speed, etc... Japanese companies come along in the 70's with cheap, fuel effecient cars...just when we need it...the US companies refused to change until it was too late. In the 80's you see purchases/mergers (Ford buys Mazda, etc)...US companies begin outsourcing to Mexico & Canada...
In the 90's many ppl began to own Toyotas, Hondas, etc... Now you have the uniquely American SUV, American companies like Saturn and Chrysler (now Daimler-Chrysler) trying to develop a market...and interestingly enough, some of those Manufacturing and R&D jobs (even Japanese companies) are returning to the US...Toyota has both R&D and Manufacturing facilities in the US.
One thing has remained true all along the way...the good ppl in R&D stay in the industry and Maintanence remains here.
One thing is for sure...your small, specialized and in-house coding jobs and administration will stay here. A small company, School, City, etc can't afford to outsource a couple of jobs. Just like TV repairmen, Auto Mechanics, and custom performance modifications, these will remain well paying for the forseeable future.
I meant that the PeeCee is a "one-hit wonder" in respects to the top 10 list...
It's not an exact science...but the truth is, your argument supports my theory...there ARE more consoles out there, which means that this list reflects reality to an extent. If the list were dominated by 1 console, then it may be biased...but the list looks to be a pretty good sampling of what ppl are playing and as such, it should also give us a good sampling of just what systems they are playing them on...
It's obvious from the odd M$ figures, the XBox had the lowest sales...why else would they mix figures...someone had to tell em "But Sony and Nintendo gave us numbers, not percentages"...you can bet that if they outsold even Nintendo they'ld want everyone to know...from these figures, the XBox was probably outsold by the NGage :)
Of course, this is how things were last year as well...noone has released any new hardware in the set-top arena and the PS2 has got a few more tricks up its sleeves since last year...what would be interesting to see is how much of Nintendo and Sony's sales were XBox owners...
Wanna see how the real figures probably work out...just look at GameFAQs' Top Games...this is a telling list, it tells you exactly what ppl are playing right now...
In the top 10, it looks like we have 7 PS2 games, 1 PC game (highest of the "one hit wonders"), 1 Nintendo game, and 1 XBox game (almost didn't make it on the top 10)...
Which sounds about right for what I've seen as well...
Good, now how about a port of Colem (the colecovision emulator)...this console would be perfect for a handheld...
The colecovision had 16 colors, low quality sound (by todays standards), low resolution, and low rom sizes (16 to 32kbytes)...
By comparison, the C= 64 had a hybrid Analog/Digital sound chip (SID), support for add-on hardware, paddles, joysticks, flight controllers, mice, and larger applications (180 to 320 kbytes)...
The earlier game consoles just make more sense to emulate on a handheld...
The part about this story that gets to me is that the researcher didn't alert Microsoft before posting to a public mailing list.
Why should he? Would M$ show the same courtesy if it were a bug in Mozilla or Linux? What about the open source public reporting method? Hasn't that worked out? Isn't it better to let ppl know in advance that there's a bug that should be dealt with...
I would argue that just because it's proprietary software doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated the same as open source...the argument could be made that M$ doesn't have nearly as much developers as the larger open source projects, and I'ld have to agree...as a matter of fact, I think M$ should probably hire some more coders to deal with their shortage...maybe even help the job market some.
The truth is, M$ should be able to at least release info on a work around in a couple of days...and if there's no way to create a work around, maybe they need to rethink their how their code is setup...
Isn't that kinda like potholes on state roads...even though you might not hit one today, you know there's alot of em out there...and boy does it suck when you find one...
Until M$ removes IE's death clutch on the OS (read never), there will always be bugs that cause havoc with the OS.
OS-Browser integration was the worse idea since Bob!!! (another M$ "innovation")
Well, I don't know about you, but if 2.4 "just works" and 2.6 would not add any advantages except maybe a faster kernel and less stability...
I know what I'm sticking with...
You have to realize, we've had a few years to work all of the bugs out of 2.4...
There are always nasty bugs that show up in the single digit stages of a kernel.
To tell you the truth, I wouldn't trust 2.6 to a production environment until someone comes out with a server distro based on it...
Because some ppl are still running 2.4 in production environments...the headline is actually kinda wrong...the kernel will actually have new releases...they will just be maintanence releases...only, no new drivers, etc...just bug fixes...
For instance, there was a new release of the 2.2 kernel as early as March of this year.
No, it's better...it runs MPlayer...which plays realmedia without all of the Real Networks ads!!!
802.11b is not new technology. By now it's commodity hardware. THe oly ppl employed by making 802.11b technology are manual laborers... Americans are not good at making things cheaper (it's the whole cost of living thing)...
Americans make things faster or better...
Americans are innovators, the rest of the world takes the technology and makes it cheaper...it's been this way since international trade has existed.
Americans should be busy working on making wireless better, not making commodity technology...it's the only way we've stayed ahead of the curve in the past...
Well, if Apple comes out with the Lynx, then maybe we'll find out :)
Lynx is really the only other Atari name that fits in the "big cat" theme...
Of course, I just hope it's not a fore-shadowing of Apple's future...the Panther was one of the last systems Atari worked on...
Anyhow, it's more likely that it's just a good source of project names...
I used to be a full-blown /\miga Fanatic... I was eventually forced to switch to a PeeCee after C= died and it wqaqs obvious that there would not be another Amiga (still have my Amiga 2000).
But imagine my frustration when I switched from a 14MHz Amiga to a Pentium 166 MMX (best at the time)...
Switching from a Realtime OS with a *NIX style CLI to a POS (M$ Win*) was a major problem for me. I had become used to the system responding at my command (something I enjoyed after having to deal with my first computer...a C= 64) and using the many advantages of the *NIX command line...
Of course, Linux now has the new preempt patch in the 2.6 kernel which makes me extremely happy...
When was the last time you knew of a group (people or otherwise) to follow a predetermined set of rules outside of the lab??? It's around us every day...then again, I guess the RIAA planed for CDs to lead to massive digital piracy...
And if you say that doesn't count, then I don't want you developing any drugs I'm going to be taking...
There's a huge gap between modeling an enzyme and developing a drug inside of a computer...how do you know when a new pain medicine adversely effects the liver?
While I want to belive what you say, I must point out that you are making a mistake. This puzzle is purely logical (mechanical)...the things you mention (market economics and human-drug interaction) are organic in nature...
Computers are good at doing mechanical computations, but we have yet to perfect computation of organic systems...as a matter of fact, some would say it's impossible.
If you ever read the book or watched the show Connections, you'ld know that this could be said for every invention dating all the way back to the plow...
Yea, you'd think so, but foreign relations have a way of working this kind of thing out...maybe we use it as a negotiating tool...or maybe we pressure other countries to impose restrictions...it all works out in the end.
SGI doesn't really have to advertise, as their primary market already knows who they are...their problem is related to their price compared to the much cheaper companies out there. SGI should really stick to making really good CG workstations. They have their most competency in this niche market and shouldn't look at going into other markets until they recover their strongest one.
:)
Like it or not, SGI can help you if you have a problem with your render farm, but they wouldn't know crap about helping you fix your database (ok, this is a little harsh, but you get the point).
It's almost like saying M$ knows how to do a good server OS
I see what you're saying too, but sadly, I just haven't seen this. The good managers tend to not be too tech savy...
I think the tech savy managers get ideas about how stuff should be implimented and end up running the show, which means you get a bunch of guys working in the one way that won't get them fired which means they also make the same skrew-ups that would never have been made if they had a say. And even a technical interview just can't get you past a good BSer...
Sadly, many of the managers within IBM tend to be of 2 types...good manager, no technical abilities...and bad manager, good techie...problem is given the choice, I would rather work for the former. A good manager knows how to listen to their ppl and can at least try to keep them happy...Not all fall into one of these groups...I've worked for all 4...
Bad Manager, Bad Techie (the worst kind)
Good Manager, Bad Techie (like I said, they know how to deal with people and extract the info they need)
Bad Manager, Good Techie (Regardless of their technical abilities a bad manager is still a bad manager.)
And my favorite...
Good Manager, Good Techie (These guys never stay in one place for a long time...they tend to be on their way to the top and bigger paychecks won't keep em in a lower position.)
Yea, but tell that to a manager who sees Linux on practically every resume they are seeing now...
Dell has Intel religion, no matter what. Serious whitebox sticker slappers. Also, are they moving too much support to India?
Sadly, management and bean counters (the ones that generally end up having the final say in what servers are bought) don't care about this...that's why they hired sysadmins they say...and here's a clue for you...IBM is one of the biggest offshore outsourcers...especially to IBM India...
SGI has serious marketing problems.
No, SGI has serious market problems. they can no longer sell hugely expensive workstations to hollywood studios. They have seen their market shift from selling proprietary workstations/servers with a proprietary *NIX (IRIX) to commodity intel hardware with high end GFX cards running Linux. They were forced to change their market strategy because their customers began shifting to Linux. Lucky for them they started to offer Linux machines before their market disappeared. Their problem is they have to compete with the likes of IBM, Dell, and HP/Compaq in the x86 Linux market and they're being asked to do it on a much tighter budget than they ever had...
Now, Sun is starting to see the same thing happen. Their primary market (scientific research) is starting to see a shift to Linux and they are left with a proprietary *NIX that is behind AIX in almost every way. Solaris 9 is a good step in the right direction, but they still don't have a good JFS!!!
Yes, but the problem with IBM and their new Linux jobs is that most managers are trying to get by with hiring Linux personel at the same costs as Windoze personel. Trust me, I know (don't ask, can't tell)...
The problem with Linux becoming mainstream is that Linux (and as a result *NIX) knowledge is starting to become more widespread and therefore less of a commodity...
I think you will start to see more Linux positions, but they will be paying much less than before...
Of course, as always it is my opinion that the real good ppl will still be paid highly, they will just have to take on more jobs or more demanding positions...
$500 or so as a bonus, an extra day or 2 vacation at christmas time, a $100 - $200 gift for each employee, maybe throw a small holiday party for your employees and their families at a nice local hotel(where you could present their gifts and bonus checks as well as announce extra vacation time for employees). And make sure to put some away for the future.
You would know better what your employees would appreciate. 5 employees are easy to please...try pleasing 200+ employees...
By making sure to spend a little in a few different ways, each of your employees will find some benefit in the way you have spent the money. This also requires you to do a bit more work than a gift or bonus alone, but it will likely not go unnoticed.
Nasty crashes in Wine have a tendency to cause X crashes. Somehow I doubt that logging you out of X (probably same as CTRL+ALT+BackSpace) was the intended effect. The reason this happens (just a WAG) is that Wine is integrated with X to an extent that a crash in Wine can cause problems in X. The fix for this would be to simply back off on the integration with X, but then the apps wouldn't be as responsive as they are now...
So you want to run outlook on Linux (you must have your reasons, I wouldn't)...
Wine can use any directory in Linux as a drive, so you simply create an outlook directory, run it in its own environment which means that the only problems you will see are those brought about by the application. As even a virus in Wine will happily run in a contained environment.
When you want to send an attachment from another app, you simply copy or make a symlink using your favorite Linux tools.
As far as bugs in Outlook, if you have problem with those, then maybe you should rethink your choice in e-mail clients.
The only way for a Windoze virus to compromise a Linux system would be to exploit a vulnerability in Wine...and since you should be running apps as an unprivleged user, no problems...not to menton that any exploit in Wine would probably simply result in a crash of the app.