The best way to sell yourself is by promoting solutions that you provide.
Small business - firewall/hosting/email servers? Workflow? Antispam solutions?
Ensure that you are not just promoting "general IT service skills" have something unique.
Sell to small business, but realize they may stiff you. Small business are easier to get as customers, but typically have less money and expect more than their larger counterparts. Try to get a vertical industry niche. Retail, Law Firms etc. And then tailor solutions to them. Once you have a specific solution you can go after the only place in IT there is real money - the fortune 1000.
Get some contacts of people who specialize in certain things. Its impossible to know everything - exchange, linux, groupwise, time matters etc.
Finally, be aware it will probably take 3-7 years before you develop a "decent" living. Once you have the customer base life gets a lot easier.
Probably the two best closed source collaboration tools are Lotus Notes or Groove.
Notes you can get someone else to host it. Groove doesn't require a central server. Both allow you replicate your discussion board offline.
If you look at job ads you are not counted
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
persons not employed who responded that their only job search method was looking at job ads in newspapers were classified as in the labour force and unemployed in Canada while they were treated as out of the labour force in the United States.
So if you look at job ads and there aren't any you qualify for you are considered not unemployed according to the US government.
If the support is like their smaller players then it only supports ogg vorbis greater than 96Kbs
On my smaller iriver all my voice recordings in OGG Vorbis format will not play. I recorded several audio books at 46Kbs Ogg. Each AudioBook CD is 12 Meg and very clear. The iriver only works with oggs vorbis at over 96Kbs. I would like to see 32Kbs + Ogg Vorbis support. Speex support would be even better(8 kHz, 16 kHz, and 32 kHz). I had to re-record my audiobooks in mp3 with lame (at 26 Meg and lower quality). Ogg files at the required bit rate are 48 Meg.
GCC 3.4.x - Precompiled Headers (Speed up) and C++ improvements (and more coming)
Kernel 2.6.8
KDE 3.3 - which includes a much improved KDE PIM groupwhere packages.
X.org x11 6.8 - with translucency & Drop shadows
GNOME 2.8 - New Admin stuff and a lot of other features
Evolution 2.0 - Offline IMAP & WebCal support
SELinux
IIIMF - Standardized Asian character input Wow!. Torrents are available
This specification is in no way aimed at replacing XForms 1.0 [XForms], nor is it a subset of XForms 1.0.
XForms 1.0 is well suited for describing business logic and data constraints. Unfortunately, due to its requirements on technologies not widely supported by Web browsers, it has not been widely implemented by those browsers itself. This specification aims to simplify the task of transforming XForms 1.0 systems into documents that can be rendered on every day Web browsers.
I wrote a short faq: http://xminc.com/linux/wxpython.html faq.
wxDesigner: one of the most complete but is closed source commercialware Somewhat focused on C++ development I don't like having to use their editor outputs xml, python, c++, or perl code Good, cheap, and stable - developed by one of the wxWindows developers.
http://www.roebling.de/
wxGlade: nice - under development - copies the best features of glade. Easy to use and extend. Not a full rad - more of a screen drawer. outputs xml, c++ or python code nice tutorial Actively developed
PythonCard: Nice if you want to make simple quick app. I find this kind of tool can cause people to put the business logic in the gui though. Speeds development by simplifying the event model. Outputs python code No option for xml output - but this may be coming soon Actively Developed
Americans are typically more willing to get into debt to have the latest gadget. This allows companies to flog stuff to consumers that will buy the lastest thing - even if they can't currently afford it.
When people talk about India as a place to invest they invariably mention the IITs; Indian Institutes of Technology. I visted a few of them in 1997 - and the students they graduate are the elite of India. A very bright bunch. No one seems to mention that only 4,000 of them graduate every year. Of that 1,900 are graduate degree holders.
That total is smaller than than one major university in the US such as Cornell despite the fact that there are six of them, for a country of almost 1 Billion. The majority of IIT graduates flee India for the US, Canada, UK and Austrailia. Few return.
Greater China meanwhile is the largest source of US foreign students. China has more that 60,000 graduates from US schools (4000 from top universities - Ivy League etc) per year. In the 1990s more that 40% of US Electrical Engineering Phds went to Taiwan Nationals (a country of only 22 Million). Most return to China or Taiwan.
According to UNESCO only 27 percent of children in India were enrolled in grade one. A lot of work needs to be done for general education. If too many foreign companies start business process outsourcing to India the market for knowledge workers will quickly become bleak.
China and Taiwan have school attendance rates comparable or superior to the US.
Indians have a tendancy migrating to Canada, UK, US or Australia. I think because they feel more at home with the language.
The post WWII US dominance was due to military funding of the cold war and the so called "spunik generation". Americans who went into science because of Russia launching the first rockets.
US mainland received no substantial attacks during WWI - so the economy dominated the world. More money was left for corporate R&D.
Asia - in particlar China + Taiwan will dominate the end of the century scientifically if degrees are any indicator. 1 in 6 Chinese degrees go to Engineering or Science. Most US Phds in sciences go to Asians (Primarily Chinese). They are increasingly heading home after finishing their Phds.
The only question is that historically Chinese have not focused on basic research - prefering practical applications of technology such as the steelyard, abacus, ceramics, papermaking, printing, the compas, oil rigs, etc
Sun has traditionally been a platform (OS + Hardware) for hosting large RDBMS database systems. The database systems that were typically hosted on it were Sybase and Oracle and ERP systems such as SAP. These have been systems that are hard to split up. Typically they scale up rather than out. MainFrame systems for example are typically used as database servers. They called their systems "Open" because at the time the majority of hardware and software platforms (IBM, etc) were proprietary and closed.
This market is rapidly shifting and Sun - with its high cost structure seems unable to innovate itself out of a market that is being hit with two disruptive technologies, Linux and scalable X86 processors, and one monopolist, Microsoft, who would like to take the RDBMS market. The current three strongest database vendors are IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft and none of them offer any hope to Sun.
Like DEC before it, Sun is focused on only its best customers and has never made any significant inroads on the low end. Linux and Microsoft are the dual commoditizing stakes that will go through Sun's heart. However, this will be gradual. Large accounting and banking systems run on Sun - and typically Enterprise customers change these systems very slowly.(Check out Clayton Christensen for more)
Sybase A while ago Sybase was synonymous with Sun systems in the financial industry. Sybase has been loosing market share ever since around 1994, when Microsoft bought a copy of the source code of Sybase SQL Server and then went on its own way. Sybase has recently shifted its focus from the large server to the mobile market.
Oracle is getting its margins killed by Microsoft and IBM. Its fighting back by using parallel servers which allows you to split up its database onto many commodity systems running Linux. Saves money for the customers and there is more potential margin for Oracle. Oracle has moved its "whole business" over to running on Linux on X86 systems.
SAP is another company weary of Microsoft - they have shifted all their development all over to the Linux platform and are promoting it to their customers. Linux typically runs on Intel or AMD systems.
Microsoft is the fastest growing Relational Database vendor (along with MySQL perhaps), eating market share from everyone and with a huge war chest and aggressive licensing packages to force companies to purchase their database system. Microsoft is essentially giving its software away to large companies at $300-$2000 a pop.
IBM's DB2 typically runs on IBM hardware with AIX, OS400, OS390 or more recently Linux as the operating system. No potential sales for Sun here.
Linux - with the 2.6 kernel Linux now has most of the features needed for large scale relational database hosting. Linux already scaled well to 4 CPUs. Now it with the 2.6 kernel it will scale well in the 16-64 CPU range - Sun's bread and butter. Features such as CPU hot swap are available.
Intel - relentlessly seeking higher margins Intel and AMD are scaling up their servers as they gun for the larger profits that the RDBMS hosting business offers.
from my weblog http://xminc.com/mt/
Performance + Scalability?
on
Plone 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I used the ab benchmarking tool from Apache to test Plone 2 and the performance seemed fairly poor when compared with Lotus Domino or mod_python.
It reminds be of my original compaq sewing machine sized computer - 26 pounds or so. http://members.tripod.com/~net2000plus/compaq.htm
I would strap it on the back of my bike when I rode home - hoping not to tip over.
The rockets that power China's space programme are virtually indistinguishable from the intercontinental ballistic missiles that are intended to carry its nuclear warheads. China has been modernising and expanding its nuclear force for some time; it has already shown that it can release more than one satellite from a single rocket, giving it a capability to put multiple warheads on a single missile should it choose to do so.
Shocked by America's technological wizardry on display in the first Gulf war, and even more so by the speed of its victory in the second, China is also working feverishly to overcome more conventional handicaps. Fighter aircraft, bombers, ships and submarines bought from Russia are aimed at deterring America from coming to the assistance of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, in any future crisis. So is the plan to deploy a new radar satellite in 2005, able to peek though the clouds to track America's naval movements near the island.
It was ment tongue in cheek. I live there/here - my American friends often refer to it as "socialist" - I think primarily due to the higher personal tax rate, better public schools, and healthcare.
Take wealth rather than income, and America's disparity is even more startling. The wealthiest 1% of all households controls 38% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% of households holds only 17%, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Around 85% of stockmarket wealth is held by a lucky 20%.
That's capitalism at work. World wide statistics are show the top 1% holding even higher % of wealth. Not that there is anything wrong with it. US is the most unequal of the OECD, followed by Switzerland and socialist Canada.
I like the profile of SCO.
The SCO Group, Inc. develops and markets software based onthe Linux operating system and provides related services that enable the development, deployment and management of Internet access devices and specialized servers. For the six months ended 4/30/03, revenues rose 5% to $34.9 million. Net income totalled $3.8 million vs. a loss of $17.6 million.... It only mentions Linux - nothing about unix at all.
I have been using OO 1.1 now for 6 months or so. Its beta - but it is very stable. Some of the features (print to pdf) make it worth including it in the distro now.
Also does anyone know if they have included the Ximain OO hacks for OO?
Slashdot Mirror
The best way to sell yourself is by promoting solutions that you provide.
Small business - firewall/hosting/email servers?
Workflow?
Antispam solutions?
Ensure that you are not just promoting "general IT
service skills" have something unique.
Sell to small business, but realize they may stiff you. Small business are easier to get as customers, but typically have less money and expect more than their larger counterparts. Try to get a vertical industry niche. Retail, Law Firms etc. And then tailor solutions to them. Once you have a specific solution you can go after the only place in IT there is real money - the fortune 1000.
Get some contacts of people who specialize in certain things. Its impossible to know everything - exchange, linux, groupwise, time matters etc.
Finally, be aware it will probably take 3-7 years before you develop a "decent" living. Once you have the customer base life gets a lot easier.
Probably the two best closed source collaboration tools are Lotus Notes or Groove.
Notes you can get someone else to host it. Groove doesn't require a central server. Both allow you replicate your discussion board offline.
So if you look at job ads and there aren't any you qualify for you are considered not unemployed according to the US government.
http://www.cabe.ca/cbe/vol4_2/42-zagorsky.pdf
If the support is like their smaller players then it only supports ogg vorbis greater than 96Kbs
On my smaller iriver all my voice recordings in OGG Vorbis format will not play. I recorded several audio books at 46Kbs Ogg. Each AudioBook CD is 12 Meg and very clear. The iriver only works with oggs vorbis at over 96Kbs. I would like to see 32Kbs + Ogg Vorbis support. Speex support would be even better(8 kHz, 16 kHz, and 32 kHz). I had to re-record my audiobooks in mp3 with lame (at 26 Meg and lower quality). Ogg files at the required bit rate are 48 Meg.
From the presentation(slide 16) tomcat is no longer part of FC.
A nice presentation from a tlug describing the changes.
GCC 3.4.x - Precompiled Headers (Speed up) and C++ improvements (and more coming)
Kernel 2.6.8
KDE 3.3 - which includes a much improved KDE PIM groupwhere packages.
X.org x11 6.8 - with translucency & Drop shadows
GNOME 2.8 - New Admin stuff and a lot of other features
Evolution 2.0 - Offline IMAP & WebCal support
SELinux
IIIMF - Standardized Asian character input
Wow!. Torrents are available
Have a look at the kde pim - pim.kde.org it's already very good as of 3.2.1.
I find the calendar klunky.
The product is $50 USD and is closed source commercial-ware. Why not just buy win4lin ($99) and run an old version of Excel 97?
Alternatively you get codeweavers wine for $40 and run your old MS Office tools and at the same time support wine development.
More important is to have OpenOffice have all the Excel charting functionality. Currently OOo Charting tools are a bit more crude.
Compatibility for WordArt is not at the top of my requirements list for compatibility.
1.3. Relationship to XForms
This specification is in no way aimed at replacing XForms 1.0 [XForms], nor is it a subset of XForms 1.0.
XForms 1.0 is well suited for describing business logic and data constraints. Unfortunately, due to its requirements on technologies not widely supported by Web browsers, it has not been widely implemented by those browsers itself. This specification aims to simplify the task of transforming XForms 1.0 systems into documents that can be rendered on every day Web browsers.
I wrote a short faq :
http://xminc.com/linux/wxpython.html
faq.
wxDesigner:
one of the most complete but is closed source commercialware
Somewhat focused on C++ development
I don't like having to use their editor
outputs xml, python, c++, or perl code
Good, cheap, and stable - developed by one of the wxWindows developers.
http://www.roebling.de/
wxGlade:
nice - under development - copies the best features of glade. Easy to use and extend.
Not a full rad - more of a screen drawer.
outputs xml, c++ or python code
nice tutorial
Actively developed
PythonCard:
Nice if you want to make simple quick app.
I find this kind of tool can cause people to put the business logic in the gui though.
Speeds development by simplifying the event model.
Outputs python code
No option for xml output - but this may be coming soon
Actively Developed
XRC:
Simple xml widget editor
Americans are typically more willing to get into debt to have the latest gadget. This allows companies to flog stuff to consumers that will buy the lastest thing - even if they can't currently afford it.
From my weblog:
http://www.xminc.com/mt/archives/000085.html
Indias IITs overrated
When people talk about India as a place to invest they invariably mention the IITs; Indian Institutes of Technology. I visted a few of them in 1997 - and the students they graduate are the elite of India. A very bright bunch. No one seems to mention that only 4,000 of them graduate every year. Of that 1,900 are graduate degree holders.
That total is smaller than than one major university in the US such as Cornell despite the fact that there are six of them, for a country of almost 1 Billion. The majority of IIT graduates flee India for the US, Canada, UK and Austrailia. Few return.
Greater China meanwhile is the largest source of US foreign students. China has more that 60,000 graduates from US schools (4000 from top universities - Ivy League etc) per year. In the 1990s more that 40% of US Electrical Engineering Phds went to Taiwan Nationals (a country of only 22 Million). Most return to China or Taiwan.
According to UNESCO only 27 percent of children in India were enrolled in grade one. A lot of work needs to be done for general education. If too many foreign companies start business process outsourcing to India the market for knowledge workers will quickly become bleak.
China and Taiwan have school attendance rates comparable or superior to the US.
Indians have a tendancy migrating to Canada, UK, US or Australia. I think because they feel more at home with the language.
(ps my first post contained a typo WWI -> WWII)
The post WWII US dominance was due to military funding of the cold war and the so called "spunik generation". Americans who went into science because of Russia launching the first rockets.
US mainland received no substantial attacks during WWI - so the economy dominated the world. More money was left for corporate R&D.
Asia - in particlar China + Taiwan will dominate the end of the century scientifically if degrees are any indicator. 1 in 6 Chinese degrees go to Engineering or Science. Most US Phds in sciences go to Asians (Primarily Chinese). They are increasingly heading home after finishing their Phds.
http://xminc.com/mt/archives/oil3.pngThe only question is that historically Chinese have not focused on basic research - prefering practical applications of technology such as the steelyard, abacus, ceramics, papermaking, printing, the compas, oil rigs, etc
If you include python and perl in your definition of open source. Big 5 bank I know has either a python based app or perl on every desktop and server.
Python is typically used for a desktop and perl on the (unix) server side.
Intranet site is generated dynamically with python. Mail system is dependant on Sendmail (with license).
Sun has traditionally been a platform (OS + Hardware) for hosting large RDBMS database systems. The database systems that were typically hosted on it were Sybase and Oracle and ERP systems such as SAP. These have been systems that are hard to split up. Typically they scale up rather than out. MainFrame systems for example are typically used as database servers. They called their systems "Open" because at the time the majority of hardware and software platforms (IBM, etc) were proprietary and closed.
This market is rapidly shifting and Sun - with its high cost structure seems unable to innovate itself out of a market that is being hit with two disruptive technologies, Linux and scalable X86 processors, and one monopolist, Microsoft, who would like to take the RDBMS market. The current three strongest database vendors are IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft and none of them offer any hope to Sun.
Like DEC before it, Sun is focused on only its best customers and has never made any significant inroads on the low end. Linux and Microsoft are the dual commoditizing stakes that will go through Sun's heart. However, this will be gradual. Large accounting and banking systems run on Sun - and typically Enterprise customers change these systems very slowly.(Check out Clayton Christensen for more)
Sybase
A while ago Sybase was synonymous with Sun systems in the financial industry. Sybase has been loosing market share ever since around 1994, when Microsoft bought a copy of the source code of Sybase SQL Server and then went on its own way. Sybase has recently shifted its focus from the large server to the mobile market.
Oracle is getting its margins killed by Microsoft and IBM. Its fighting back by using parallel servers which allows you to split up its database onto many commodity systems running Linux. Saves money for the customers and there is more potential margin for Oracle. Oracle has moved its "whole business" over to running on Linux on X86 systems.
SAP is another company weary of Microsoft - they have shifted all their development all over to the Linux platform and are promoting it to their customers. Linux typically runs on Intel or AMD systems.
Microsoft is the fastest growing Relational Database vendor (along with MySQL perhaps), eating market share from everyone and with a huge war chest and aggressive licensing packages to force companies to purchase their database system. Microsoft is essentially giving its software away to large companies at $300-$2000 a pop.
IBM's DB2 typically runs on IBM hardware with AIX, OS400, OS390 or more recently Linux as the operating system. No potential sales for Sun here.
Linux - with the 2.6 kernel Linux now has most of the features needed for large scale relational database hosting. Linux already scaled well to 4 CPUs. Now it with the 2.6 kernel it will scale well in the 16-64 CPU range - Sun's bread and butter. Features such as CPU hot swap are available.
Intel - relentlessly seeking higher margins Intel and AMD are scaling up their servers as they gun for the larger profits that the RDBMS hosting business offers.
from my weblog http://xminc.com/mt/
I used the ab benchmarking tool from Apache to test Plone 2 and the performance seemed fairly poor when compared with Lotus Domino or mod_python.
Does it scale well? Did I do something wrong?
Anthony
It reminds be of my original compaq sewing machine sized computer - 26 pounds or so.
http://members.tripod.com/~net2000plus/compaq.htm
I would strap it on the back of my bike when I rode home - hoping not to tip over.
iNotes for Domino 6.5 supports Mozilla on linux as does the webadmin.nsf administration interface.
I think IBM is working on an eclipse based notes client and integrating Domino into Websphere. Give it 5 years and Domino will be Websphere/DB2.
The rockets that power China's space programme are virtually indistinguishable from the intercontinental ballistic missiles that are intended to carry its nuclear warheads. China has been modernising and expanding its nuclear force for some time; it has already shown that it can release more than one satellite from a single rocket, giving it a capability to put multiple warheads on a single missile should it choose to do so.
Shocked by America's technological wizardry on display in the first Gulf war, and even more so by the speed of its victory in the second, China is also working feverishly to overcome more conventional handicaps. Fighter aircraft, bombers, ships and submarines bought from Russia are aimed at deterring America from coming to the assistance of Taiwan, which China claims as its own, in any future crisis. So is the plan to deploy a new radar satellite in 2005, able to peek though the clouds to track America's naval movements near the island.
(from economist.com)
It was ment tongue in cheek. I live there/here - my American friends often refer to it as "socialist" - I think primarily due to the higher personal tax rate, better public schools, and healthcare.
Take wealth rather than income, and America's disparity is even more startling. The wealthiest 1% of all households controls 38% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% of households holds only 17%, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Around 85% of stockmarket wealth is held by a lucky 20%.
That's capitalism at work. World wide statistics are show the top 1% holding even higher % of wealth. Not that there is anything wrong with it. US is the most unequal of the OECD, followed by Switzerland and socialist Canada.
I like the profile of SCO.
The SCO Group, Inc. develops and markets software based onthe Linux operating system and provides related services that enable the development, deployment and management of Internet access devices and specialized servers. For the six months ended 4/30/03, revenues rose 5% to $34.9 million. Net income totalled $3.8 million vs. a loss of $17.6 million....
It only mentions Linux - nothing about unix at all.
I have been using OO 1.1 now for 6 months or so. Its beta - but it is very stable. Some of the features (print to pdf) make it worth including it in the distro now.
Also does anyone know if they have included the Ximain OO hacks for OO?
There distribution was alway profitable. It was there other business which pushed them into the equivalent of chapter 11.