Foreign investment is a factor, but nowhere near the biggest one is.
The shift from having pensions to superannuation, and the implementation of negative gearing are the biggest issues. Owning multiple homes has become the retirement plan of most of the population. Our politicians (including our prime minister) are some of the largest property investors in the country. We have a level of plutocracy on par with Columbia, and property developers are making a killing. Several IT people I know have already given up on buying a home.
Negative gearing is the really absurd bit though. Friend of mine had so many properties, and so much debt that the government was paying him a hardship allowance. He lives in a 3 story, 50sq mansion relatively close to the city. His top story "man cave" is bigger than most 3br apartments in the city.
It was our first house, and my partner was a lot more risk adverse than me. She insisted we be prepared for one of us being out of work and interest rates doubling. Both happened. I changed careers to IT and it took me nearly 2 years to get work, while interest rates went from 9% to 18% in a matter of months.
We managed to pay the mortgage and keep the house, but it was not a fun time.
No matter what, the PS3 can't win. GoW (gen2 release) > Resistance (gen1 release), and all the 360 fanbois can it. PS3 Oblivion > 360 Oblivion, and the 360 Fanbois cry unfair because they've had 8 months extra to work on it. You guys continually adjust your argument to suit the facts.
Yes, Sony have been dicks in the way they've over-hyped the console. And yes, the PS3 is comparatively expensive (for a console). But as a blu-ray player, it's one of the best on the market (and the cheapest). As a game console, there is a LOT of time for developers to get to learn the machine. This "console" war won't be over for years.
"The Wii is outselling the PS3 over here as well. It's near impossible to find them in stores at the moment (though that's slowly changing with every release). But I guess it's easy to outsell something that HASN'T BEEN RELEASED YET! We won't see the PS3 til March, by which time I'd say most people will be over it. That and the AUS$1000 price tag. Bad Sony, bad..."
Personally, the $1000 price tag isn't that bad. I got a Wii at launch and all the "good" games that were available. It cost me $800 for a (IMNSHO) inferior console (I do like eye candy and good sound). Personally, I'm bored of all the games I purchased. I might go back and play Zelda at some point, but monkey ball and red steel are both rubbish IMO. The only thing done on the console since before Christmas is some youtube surfing on Opera. I haven't seen a single game come out since release that compels me to buy a copy.
OTOH, there are already a number of "exclusive" games I have my eye on for the PS3. I'll probably spend another $400 on top of the console, but $1400 vs $800 is less of a (percentage) difference than $1000 vs $450. The games will always be the major expense of owning any console.
I think people will be very bored of their Wiis by March if the game developers (and in particular, Nintendo) don't get moving and create some decent games.
You can also get it on CD for the cost of postage. I purchased an old Sun UltraSparc some years ago. It cost me half a dozen VB cans and the cost of a new AU$40 clock chip (they have a battery on the clock chip and the machine won't keep time once the battery is dead) and I purchased Solaris 7 for US$10 (cost of postage + CD's) which I thought was a good deal. I was intending to run Oracle on it (for developing against it at home), but it's been a door stop since Oracle was ported to Linux.
Even though the machine I have is ultra slow, it is also ultra stable when compared to my Linux server. But that may be due to the difference in load each machine gets, and of course YMMV.
A friend has expressed interest in using it as an X-Term (it has one of the nice 17" trinitron screens). I'll make him buy me a bottle of scotch (and make a profit:D).
Designing a system from scratch does have some advantages, but can be costly.
Personally, I'd look at an OSS project that most suits your needs and get your development team to start talking to the developers. If the developers aren't working on the features you want, you can have your team start contributing to the project. If they aren't taking the project in the direction you want it to go, you can branch from the original project and create your own. Either way, you get the benefit of the work already done and get to contribute something back to the OSS community.
Google Adwords may be good for the advertiser, but Google itself is really starting to suck as a search engine.
Yesterday I tried searching for a classic bit of video called "blinddate". When I put in +"blinddate.avi", +"blinddate.mov", etc, etc with +humour I got page after page of sites with their search results (and mostly search results on p0rn). The same sort of thing happens (minus the p0rn) when I search on work related stuff too.
I'm waiting and hoping that a good replacement for google will surface soon. Either that, or google deletes it's whole database and starts again.
Until then, it's going to take too much time to find anything with the noise ratio and I'm better off finding a reputable site and following links from there.
like all organisms will eventually ballance itself out. That's what is happening here.
There are a number of facets to this.
According to some financial analysts, the US dollar has been over-valued for decades http://www.itulip.com/dollar.htm. The introduction of the Euro has started to bring it back to normality, but there is more adjustment to be done. The over-valued dollar has helped to fuel this process (making it cheaper to buy the overseas labour than employ it locally).
People in India (as a developing country) earn less money and have poorer living conditions when compared to the western world. Their cheaper labour combined with a lower currency value makes it even more attractive to import that labour. And people in India have already begun to complain about their IT work being exported to even cheaper countries like Bangladesh http://www.bitc-bd.org/.
Over time I think the living conditions in places like the USA, Europe and Australia will drop while the living conditions in asian and south east asian countries will improve. Eventually it will ballance to a point where it's unprofitable to outsource to those countries any more. But by that time a lot of people in the western countries won't be much better off than people in the developing countries.
Eventually the masses of people in the western world will become 3rd world labour in their own countries. The US, Europe and Australia already have a substantial number of working poor (and I think we can expect a lot more of that). The only people that will profit out of this in the long term are the top 1% financial earners while a great many of the middle classes become lower class.
It's all part of ballancing out the global economy. Just like when New Zealanders come to Australia, the average IQ of both countries goes down.;P
I had a PS1, own a PS2 I still occasionally play Time Crisis (PS1 game) on my PS2. I don't own an X-Box and I personally don't think the one or two outstanding games released for it would compel me to buy one. I will be buying a PS3 though (even if only for the next gen of Gran Turismo games).
But I will consider getting an X-Box Next if they have backwards compatibility. Then I'd get the X-Box next and pick up the decent X-Box games to play on it (in conjunction with the new titles for the X-Box 2).
The X-15 pilots were needed mainly because they didn't have good enough automatic control systems. Now that we have them, there's no reason to risk human lives just to tinker with high-speed rocket planes.
I think this automatic control system is very close to being perfect AI. It's doing a great job of impersonating a pilot that's had a 3 beer lunch.
I started in the industry when DOS was still the OS of choice (and Windows 286 was a brand new MS product). The money used to be good, but after a 45% drop in pay (while house prices here have increased 500%), it sucks. From experience, all you will do is destroy the fun of a good hobby. For the majority of IT workers, the hours are long, the pressure is high and the rewards suck ass.
But if you're determined to do this, do it with something you know and in a way that will inspire you. I left the IT industry for 12 months and tried to get work in the environment. I failed dismally (no degree, no experience). But by demonstrating where my passion lay I was employed by a company that writes systems for zoos, museums and aquariums. The pay still sucks, the work is hard, but I get to do research and love seeing the difference my software makes when I go onsite at zoos, museums and aquariums all over the world.
So if you're absolutely determined to do this, find a niche in the medical industry, create a product (preferably paying other people to write it) to fill that niche and sell it. Then you get to keep your profession as a doctor, contribute to people in your own field (including yourself and your patients) and dabble in IT.
The cost reduction in producing a car with these instead of different instruments would probably amount to thousands. Then the customer can choose how they want the instrument layout in their car designed. People could provide custom skins, and have it configurable on the fly.
Some on-the-fly uses I can think of are:
- Lost somewhere? Put the GPS map in the middle and all the other instruments around the edge.
- Put video from a rear mounted camera centre-dash when you're reversing. Once colour displays are available you could remove external mirrors from the car all together. That would reduce drag and require less time spent looking away from the instruments and/or the road ahead.
- Put the tacho in the middle when racing, speedo in the middle for normal driving. If you're serious about racing, put your lap times on the dash too.
- Traffic alerts via wi-fi could flash on the dash board. Also have mobile speed camera reports pop up when you're close to one.
I'm a car nut (and EV nut), so I see these as the future to that sort of vehicle. Low power usage, configurability, flexibility. I think these will be much more useful in that area (along with electronic paper uses) than as the next pda screen.
To be honest, star trek has been going down hill for a long time.
Those damned soapy writers they employed have made it almost unbearable for any sci fi fans to watch. They have so little idea of continuity that I'm surprised they know when it's lunchtime (let alone write a decent plot). Remember when they wanted to write Zephram Cochraine as female so Picard could fall in love with "her"?
IMHO they should kick the current writers out on their arse and employ some writers that will give the concepts and history of the show some justice. Preferably doing what JMS did and using different sci fi writers for each show.
Btw, I purchased every episode of star trek (TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY) on tape, but wouldn't bother with the shelf space for enterprise. I don't even bother watching or taping it when it's on TV any more.
Slashdot Mirror
It'd take a week to download that here in Australia.
In those days, banks didn't throw money at you like they do now and fixed rate loans were hard to get when you were in our 20s.
Foreign investment is a factor, but nowhere near the biggest one is.
The shift from having pensions to superannuation, and the implementation of negative gearing are the biggest issues. Owning multiple homes has become the retirement plan of most of the population. Our politicians (including our prime minister) are some of the largest property investors in the country. We have a level of plutocracy on par with Columbia, and property developers are making a killing. Several IT people I know have already given up on buying a home.
Negative gearing is the really absurd bit though. Friend of mine had so many properties, and so much debt that the government was paying him a hardship allowance. He lives in a 3 story, 50sq mansion relatively close to the city. His top story "man cave" is bigger than most 3br apartments in the city.
It was our first house, and my partner was a lot more risk adverse than me. She insisted we be prepared for one of us being out of work and interest rates doubling. Both happened. I changed careers to IT and it took me nearly 2 years to get work, while interest rates went from 9% to 18% in a matter of months.
We managed to pay the mortgage and keep the house, but it was not a fun time.
"They've had over a year to tweak it for the PS3.
What did you expect?"
No matter what, the PS3 can't win. GoW (gen2 release) > Resistance (gen1 release), and all the 360 fanbois can it. PS3 Oblivion > 360 Oblivion, and the 360 Fanbois cry unfair because they've had 8 months extra to work on it. You guys continually adjust your argument to suit the facts.
Yes, Sony have been dicks in the way they've over-hyped the console. And yes, the PS3 is comparatively expensive (for a console). But as a blu-ray player, it's one of the best on the market (and the cheapest). As a game console, there is a LOT of time for developers to get to learn the machine. This "console" war won't be over for years.
I'd have to say I agree with the non-coexistence thing.
I have a Wii and a PS2. I'll get a PS3 when it comes out, but will never, ever own a console made by (or for) Micro$oft.
"The Wii is outselling the PS3 over here as well. It's near impossible to find them in stores at the moment (though that's slowly changing with every release). But I guess it's easy to outsell something that HASN'T BEEN RELEASED YET! We won't see the PS3 til March, by which time I'd say most people will be over it. That and the AUS$1000 price tag. Bad Sony, bad..."
Personally, the $1000 price tag isn't that bad. I got a Wii at launch and all the "good" games that were available. It cost me $800 for a (IMNSHO) inferior console (I do like eye candy and good sound). Personally, I'm bored of all the games I purchased. I might go back and play Zelda at some point, but monkey ball and red steel are both rubbish IMO. The only thing done on the console since before Christmas is some youtube surfing on Opera. I haven't seen a single game come out since release that compels me to buy a copy.
OTOH, there are already a number of "exclusive" games I have my eye on for the PS3. I'll probably spend another $400 on top of the console, but $1400 vs $800 is less of a (percentage) difference than $1000 vs $450. The games will always be the major expense of owning any console.
I think people will be very bored of their Wiis by March if the game developers (and in particular, Nintendo) don't get moving and create some decent games.
Let's face it. If I hacked a box and found "C:\" staring me in the face, I wouldn't bother going back.
But, if I was presented with "root@hostname:/$ ", I'd probably go back there (after I installed Nethack).
You can download Solaris for free.
:D).
You can also get it on CD for the cost of postage. I purchased an old Sun UltraSparc some years ago. It cost me half a dozen VB cans and the cost of a new AU$40 clock chip (they have a battery on the clock chip and the machine won't keep time once the battery is dead) and I purchased Solaris 7 for US$10 (cost of postage + CD's) which I thought was a good deal. I was intending to run Oracle on it (for developing against it at home), but it's been a door stop since Oracle was ported to Linux.
Even though the machine I have is ultra slow, it is also ultra stable when compared to my Linux server. But that may be due to the difference in load each machine gets, and of course YMMV.
A friend has expressed interest in using it as an X-Term (it has one of the nice 17" trinitron screens). I'll make him buy me a bottle of scotch (and make a profit
Well at least it's nice of them to show all of their customers faces on the pic. Guess they had to keep them somehow.
Designing a system from scratch does have some advantages, but can be costly.
Personally, I'd look at an OSS project that most suits your needs and get your development team to start talking to the developers. If the developers aren't working on the features you want, you can have your team start contributing to the project. If they aren't taking the project in the direction you want it to go, you can branch from the original project and create your own. Either way, you get the benefit of the work already done and get to contribute something back to the OSS community.
Google Adwords may be good for the advertiser, but Google itself is really starting to suck as a search engine.
Yesterday I tried searching for a classic bit of video called "blinddate". When I put in +"blinddate.avi", +"blinddate.mov", etc, etc with +humour I got page after page of sites with their search results (and mostly search results on p0rn). The same sort of thing happens (minus the p0rn) when I search on work related stuff too.
I'm waiting and hoping that a good replacement for google will surface soon. Either that, or google deletes it's whole database and starts again.
Until then, it's going to take too much time to find anything with the noise ratio and I'm better off finding a reputable site and following links from there.
like all organisms will eventually ballance itself out. That's what is happening here.
;P
There are a number of facets to this.
According to some financial analysts, the US dollar has been over-valued for decades http://www.itulip.com/dollar.htm. The introduction of the Euro has started to bring it back to normality, but there is more adjustment to be done. The over-valued dollar has helped to fuel this process (making it cheaper to buy the overseas labour than employ it locally).
People in India (as a developing country) earn less money and have poorer living conditions when compared to the western world. Their cheaper labour combined with a lower currency value makes it even more attractive to import that labour. And people in India have already begun to complain about their IT work being exported to even cheaper countries like Bangladesh http://www.bitc-bd.org/.
Over time I think the living conditions in places like the USA, Europe and Australia will drop while the living conditions in asian and south east asian countries will improve. Eventually it will ballance to a point where it's unprofitable to outsource to those countries any more. But by that time a lot of people in the western countries won't be much better off than people in the developing countries.
Eventually the masses of people in the western world will become 3rd world labour in their own countries. The US, Europe and Australia already have a substantial number of working poor (and I think we can expect a lot more of that). The only people that will profit out of this in the long term are the top 1% financial earners while a great many of the middle classes become lower class.
It's all part of ballancing out the global economy. Just like when New Zealanders come to Australia, the average IQ of both countries goes down.
I had a PS1, own a PS2 I still occasionally play Time Crisis (PS1 game) on my PS2. I don't own an X-Box and I personally don't think the one or two outstanding games released for it would compel me to buy one. I will be buying a PS3 though (even if only for the next gen of Gran Turismo games).
But I will consider getting an X-Box Next if they have backwards compatibility. Then I'd get the X-Box next and pick up the decent X-Box games to play on it (in conjunction with the new titles for the X-Box 2).
It goes in your vaccuum cleaner, eventually.
You obviously haven't seen my study.
The X-15 pilots were needed mainly because they didn't have good enough automatic control systems. Now that we have them, there's no reason to risk human lives just to tinker with high-speed rocket planes.
I think this automatic control system is very close to being perfect AI. It's doing a great job of impersonating a pilot that's had a 3 beer lunch.
I started in the industry when DOS was still the OS of choice (and Windows 286 was a brand new MS product). The money used to be good, but after a 45% drop in pay (while house prices here have increased 500%), it sucks. From experience, all you will do is destroy the fun of a good hobby. For the majority of IT workers, the hours are long, the pressure is high and the rewards suck ass.
But if you're determined to do this, do it with something you know and in a way that will inspire you. I left the IT industry for 12 months and tried to get work in the environment. I failed dismally (no degree, no experience). But by demonstrating where my passion lay I was employed by a company that writes systems for zoos, museums and aquariums. The pay still sucks, the work is hard, but I get to do research and love seeing the difference my software makes when I go onsite at zoos, museums and aquariums all over the world.
So if you're absolutely determined to do this, find a niche in the medical industry, create a product (preferably paying other people to write it) to fill that niche and sell it. Then you get to keep your profession as a doctor, contribute to people in your own field (including yourself and your patients) and dabble in IT.
The number of countries outside the U.S. outnumber the number of countries inside the U.S.
Hmm, maybe the US should invite some of the the outside US countries to the world series?
Oh, and we'd get the ultimate excuse:
Umm, sorry officer. I had a BSOD and my speedo isn't working...
Please send the ticket to Sir Bill.
is where I'd like to see this used.
The cost reduction in producing a car with these instead of different instruments would probably amount to thousands. Then the customer can choose how they want the instrument layout in their car designed. People could provide custom skins, and have it configurable on the fly.
Some on-the-fly uses I can think of are:
- Lost somewhere? Put the GPS map in the middle and all the other instruments around the edge.
- Put video from a rear mounted camera centre-dash when you're reversing. Once colour displays are available you could remove external mirrors from the car all together. That would reduce drag and require less time spent looking away from the instruments and/or the road ahead.
- Put the tacho in the middle when racing, speedo in the middle for normal driving. If you're serious about racing, put your lap times on the dash too.
- Traffic alerts via wi-fi could flash on the dash board. Also have mobile speed camera reports pop up when you're close to one.
I'm a car nut (and EV nut), so I see these as the future to that sort of vehicle. Low power usage, configurability, flexibility. I think these will be much more useful in that area (along with electronic paper uses) than as the next pda screen.
Ok -- which one of you wrote this.....
I don't know, but I sure hope they take Paypal donations.
copyleft are finally going to send me my goddamned t-shirts?
I think it's also a sign that their whole strategy is running out of steam.
Umm, they have a strategy? And I was beginning to think this story wasn't news.
Seriously, folks, who gets to decide which punishment will be administered by who and where?
/em raises hand
Pick me! Pick me!
To be honest, star trek has been going down hill for a long time.
Those damned soapy writers they employed have made it almost unbearable for any sci fi fans to watch. They have so little idea of continuity that I'm surprised they know when it's lunchtime (let alone write a decent plot). Remember when they wanted to write Zephram Cochraine as female so Picard could fall in love with "her"?
IMHO they should kick the current writers out on their arse and employ some writers that will give the concepts and history of the show some justice. Preferably doing what JMS did and using different sci fi writers for each show.
Btw, I purchased every episode of star trek (TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY) on tape, but wouldn't bother with the shelf space for enterprise. I don't even bother watching or taping it when it's on TV any more.