So you're saying software products need to back port all the features from new versions to older versions for free for you otherwise they are greedy capitalists?
No, not at all. I'm a greedy Capitalist and I would go broke if I did what you suggest.
Reading the two replies to my original posting I realize that I did not state one of my assumptions. A browser is not a feature of the operating system. Neither is a graphics library. They are add on packages that can be modified, expanded, and rewritten as many times as you like without having to add any new features to the OS.
Consider the differences between Netscape 1.1 from the middle '90s and Firefox 3.6. Hugely different applications. Did anyone have to add any new features to Windows to support those browsers? Nope. Sure, they used new features when they came along. But I'm not aware of any changes made to the OS to support those browsers.
Now, MS comes along in 2010 and says they can not provide IE 10 for XP. How can I accept a statement like that as anything but a bald faced lie?
Another example would be OpenGL versus DirectX3d. You do need certain things in an OS to implement a high performance graphics library. You must have loadable device drivers.
Once you have those you can implement any number of different graphics libraries that are completely independent of the OS. For most of the last 20 or so years OpenGL has run on Windows without the need of any special features being added to the OS. And, yet MS claims that DirectX3d is part of the OS.
If you look at the history of MS and antitrust prosecutions you will find that the courts seem to be quite consistent on refusing to accept the idea that a browser is part of the OS. So, I am not alone in this view.
The capitalist in me wants a level playing field in which I can compete on the merits of my product. I do not want to be faced with artificial barriers. The level playing field is so important to capitalism that most countries have laws that try to prevent artificial monopolies. Using monopoly power to force people to buy a product is completely against the basic concepts on which American Capitalism is based. It is also illegal.
When MS claims that something is part of the OS, when it clearly is not. And, they then use the lack of that feature as a means to force people to buy a new product. They are not being capitalists. they are being thieves. They are, in my view, subverting and denigrating capitalism. In my view MS is the Goldman-Sachs of the software world. Neither organization has a close relationship with capitalism.
What makes this all even more absurd is that 7 is selling extremely well and, IMHO, would sell very well without MS trying to coerce their customers into buy it. Why is it selling so well? Because it is a damn nice OS. I plan on buying a copy after SP1 ships. You might notice that I am not what you would call an MS fan. But, I use MS Office because it is an exceptional product. Even though I run Linux on 5 out of my 6 PCs I do have one running XP just so I can run MS Office.
Oh, one last thing. MS does not make any money off of EI because they give it away. Other than as means of coercing customers they have no profit motive for *not* providing EI 10 on XP. I do not believe their is actually any cost to them for providing IE 10 on XP because there is no technical reason for there to be a cost. It there really is a cost involved it is due to either incompetence or due to MS's attempts at circumventing antitrust laws.
To make it even more ridiculous, their policy on which versions of DirectX are available on different versions of Windows has forced the game industry DirectX 10 and 11. Until the percentage of customers running XP drops significantly (last numbers I found show that 70+% of Windows users still use XP) only games aimed at the small group of hardcore gamers will even pretend to use anything but DirectX 9. The reality is that a number of games that need DirectX 10 and 11 feature
My understanding of the term "customer base" is that it refers to everyone who has purchased your products in the past. If you don't see it that way, then what I said will not make much sense.
If you have no other way of attacking the information you are presented with you attack the typos and spelling errors. This kind of attack was outlawed by netiquette before I got my first email address back in '81.
For your information I am a published author and well respected public speaker. Over the last 30 years I have been paid for every single item I have submitted for publication. And, that is a bunch. Not to mention that even though I am a software developer I have been given the task to teaching basic writing skills to people I work with, and in a few cases, for.
Your problem is that sometime in your life someone gave you the fallacious ideas that 1) the grammar rules your learned in school actually have a connection with reality, and 2) good spelling is a sign of intelligence.
LOL! Good example. OTOH, we now seem to have a good theory, based on lots of data, evolutionary psychology, and game theory, to understand the differences between those two groups.
My experience it that Republicans refuse to even look at the theory and simply assume the data is rigged while Democrats do examine the theory, and then express a desire to help the poor Republicans.
If you are ever able to progress past your current level of reasoning you will remember that post and be very very glad that you posted anonymously. I strongly recommend that until you understand how inane your response was that you not ever post using your real name.
It is literally impossible... in the same sentence where they list two ways to do it.
My bogosity meter just blew up.
What they are saying is that they can't do it without spending more money on it than they want to. More accurately they are saying that they want to get people to move from XP to 7. They do not make a dime pushing out a patch for XP. In fact, doing that costs them money. OTOH, if they refuse to provide features on XP such as DIrectX 10 and 11, and now IE 9 a bunch of people run out and buy Windows 7 either in a box or in a new computer and that mean income for MS.
Do you remember when it was "impossible" to release DirectX 10 for XP? It was impossible for MS to do it, a bunch of "amateurs" did it almost no time at all. That is, by the time I had heard the news one of my students had already installed DirectX on XP and was running the demos that came with it.
Have you looked at a list of the games that only support DirectX 10 and/or 11 that will not run on any version of DirectX 9? The list is very short. Shorter than this post... So, what is really happening is that MS was abandoning its real customer base, the 72% of windows users who use Windows XP. They don't make money off of them so they have no interest in spending money on them. You know why their are so few DirectX 10 and 11 games? Because 72% of Windows user are running XP. The game companies have to write code for machines their customers have. In fact, a lot of smaller companies are moving to OpenGL because they can get all the new 3D features of DIrectX 10 and 11 on XP. sheesh...
It is unbelievable what a company is so certain of retaining its customers that it can abandon them and mistreat them and still assume they will be customers in the future. But, they can because they own the *minds* of their customers.
Well... I notice I'm starting to rant... so...
Stonewolf
OK, just one last rant... I've had to explain to a students that memorizing the DIrectX API would not help him write games for his favorite game box, the PS 3. He called me a liar. His world view did not include a computer that ran an OS other than Windows or a game that was written using any thing but DirectX. It is so sad...
Of course in their case it just that they are too stupid to breath.
Their site works fine with Linux and Firefox, but they deliberately refuse to work with anything but Windows and Mac. Spoofing the user agent string lets the site work perfectly with any OS and pretty much any browser. They tell me they do this for "security" but it doesn't actually work that way.
Yeah, a bit off topic. But, I posted this as an example of the hold MS has on the *minds* of their customers. I've gotten fairly high up into Citi banks IT folks by being polite and telling their customer service people that what they just told me doesn't make any sense. That it goes against the very mathematical basis of computer science that governs the way networks and computers work. And then demanding a valid explanation. You have say things like, "Yes, I understand that that is what you were told, and I know you are not lying to me. But, you have been lied to, and you don't have the technical training you would need to know that. Please put me through to someone who can answer my question or cancel my account." That works, especially if you are willing to try to explain what is really going on. So, after many hours I finally get to a guy who is so locked into the idea the MS is Lord and Linux is the Devil that even though he is very technical he can not think reasonably about my question.
I've had several similar experience in my life. Trying to explain to a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim that not believing in his God does not make you an Atheist is a lot like trying to explain to that guy why Linux is not evil.
It would help me to understand your answer if you include information about your age, your level of education, and your personal wealth. Oh yeah, since you are posting about the health insurance reform bill it would help to know if you have ever suffered from a long term illness or ever lost a job because of the cost of health insurance.
Seriously, I want to know where you are coming from.
Me, I 57. I have a Masters (non terminal) in Computer Science. My net worth is around 3/4 million. I have health insurance through my wifes job. I am uninsurable. I can't buy health insurance for any price. I am currently under treatment for persistent prostatitis caused by prostate stones. I have prostate stones because I changed jobs and did not have coverage for a preexisting condition known as GERD. I have GERD as a result of a hiatal hernia. How did I get a hiatal hernia? I was born with it. So, technically I was born with a preexisting condition. I'm lucky I ever had health insurance. What about COBRA you say? Well I did get COBRA coverage for my child with epilepsy. But COBRA is very expensive and I could not afford it for the whole family. Well then why did I change jobs? Well... it was a start up funded by a Japanese company. I jumped to a contract position at IBM. That also got shut down. I was out of work for a while then but I was able to find a job that paid 60% of what I had been making. That as during the recession in the early '90s so I felt lucky to have a job at all. That also got shut down. Anyway, I could afford the meds I needed for GERD. But then it got worse and I could not afford to see a specialist to get the prescription changed. So, being young and foolish (my early 40s) I just took commercial antacids to supplement the meds.
Antacids contain a lot of calcium and eating too much calcium can give you stones in the oddest places. You think of stones and you thing of kidney stones or gal stones. You think of lots of pain. But, you also know there are some pretty good treatments.
You know how you get rid of prostate stones? You might pass a few, they tend to be very small. You've heard of the pain of passing a kidney stone. Well imagine that pain, if you can, happening every time you make love or jerk off. But, short of removing the prostate you don't get rid of the stones. Have you ever broken a bone? Had appendicitis? Been shot? Had a baby? I met a lot of people who can not imagine serious pain because they have never experienced it.
Guess what? Those stones serve as homes for bacteria. Normally you can cure a prostate infection with 2 weeks of a generic antibiotic. If you have stones... well, the first time I got a prostate infection it took a year of treatment to clear it up. A year of alternating antibiotics. Usually two different antibiotics at a time. I was sure lucky that it was not considered to be a preexisting condition. Wow, That would have been a bitch. The antibiotics cost as much as a $1000 dollars a month.
All that just because I had an uncovered preexisting condition for one year. Yeah, I had insurance while I was taking all those antacids. It just didn't cover my preexisting condition.
Oh by the way, if I had been uninsured when I had that year long infection I still would have gotten treatment. It would not have been as good, and it would have taken a lot more time. And, it would not have cost me a dime. You see, I live in the US where we have the most absurd form of universal health care in the world. If you show up at an emergency room and are sick or injured, they must treat you. Then they can try to collect the money from you. If you don't pay... well eventually the debt goes away. Yeah, there is a statute of limitation on debt in most of the US. Here in Texas it is 4 years. So, of course the emergency room would stop serving me if I don't pay, right? Nope, not allowed by law. Guess who pays for all of that unpaid for health care? We do, you and I. Why do you think it costs so much to go to a hosp
I got to see the Challenger launch before NASA and Thiokol blew it up. I was at the launch of STS-41B. I was an officer in a chapter of the AIAA that sponsored a get away special canister (G-008) that flew on Challenger carrying experiments put together by local high school and college students.
The engineer who blew the whistle on the deadly o-rings was a member of our chapter. We held a special meeting in hist honor. Funny, isn't it, that just behaving according the expected standards of your profession can make you a hero. But, it is true, so few people live up to the minimal expected standards of morality or professionalism that when someone does it proves that they are a hero.
What a lot of us learned from the destruction of the Challenger and her crew was that NASA lies. (I'm not talking about the idiots who think we never went to the moon... god what idiots...) I'm talking about the kind of lies they tell to get what they want. They lie about what projects will cost. They lie about safety. They lie about performance. Can anyone name a successful space launch vehicle created by NASA in the last 20 years? (And, no, the shuttle doesn't count. That project started, officially, around 1966. In reality it started a lot earlier. Maybe as far back as the late 1930s or early 1940s.) I can't. I can give you a long list of failed projects. Even NASA's very successful Mars explores caught a ride on commercial Delta IIs.
NASA is primarily in the business of keeping its self alive. NASA is not in the business of exploring space. In fact, it has worked hard to keep people who wanted to explore space, or do business in space, or even build a high performance rocket, from being able to do any thing. It took decades to the legal system in place that is needed to allow private operations. It took decades not because our representatives didn't try, but because NASA with the help of the DOD worked as hard as they possibly could spreading FUD to stop the laws from passing. I know you won't believe me on this. So what, ask Jerry Pournelle he has been following and reporting on NASA's lies for longer than anyone. Go ahead, ask him. (No his is not a friend of mine. But, he is the guy who taught me about 75% of what I know about flame wars. Yeah, back in the days of the ARPA net...)
Ever wondered why space shuttles are so damned expensive? Ever wondered why there are so few of them? Ever wondered who owns the shuttles and the tooling to make space shuttles? If you ask you'll be told that there are so few of them because they are so expensive. They are so expensive because they are so high tech and complex. And, of course, everyone knows that NASA owns the shuttles and everything having to do with them. How about this question "Why do the space shuttles have a hypersonic glide capability with a 1500 mile cross range capability?" A cargo van doesn't need to be able to drive like a formula 1 race car. Giving the space shuttle those capabilities added weight, reduced payload, and dramatically increased its cost. So, why did they do it? BTW, One of the last shuttle designs considered, before the current design, reentered with the body and wings perpendicular to its direction of travel and only switched to gliding, rather than falling, after slowed to below mach one. It had a landing speed as slow, or slower, than a commercial airliner and could land on any runway and was not capable of flying at supersonic speed.
When you start saying that only NASA can build a manned space craft please remember that NASA approved the designs of the original Apollo that cremated its crew. They also approved the design of the space shuttle that has so far killed two crews in 134 flights. If a commercial aircraft had that kind of safety record in testing it would never be allowed to operate. Home built aircraft have a better safety record because of the inspection requirements for licensing. Even the X-15 which was a purely experimental aircraft that was deliberately flown at speeds and altitudes never before reached by any manned
"We" created a policy.... Did the we include all of the owners? If not, did it include any of the owners? If not, who the hell do you think you are?
Seriously, an employee trying to make a policy for an owner looks a lot like a 2 year old trying to set policy for his grandparents. Not his parents... that isn't strong enough.
The art of managing "up" is difficult to learn and very hard to do. If you get caught doing it you may be fired of the spot for insubordination. The charge will stick.
One way to approach it is to keep track of how long it has been since *any* owners laptop has been backed up. After a month or two when you just happen to be talking to X (one of the owners) you say something like "What did it cost you when that data on Y's laptop was lost?". That might lead to an interesting discussion. Or, you might hear "None of your business" or "That is above your pay grade". No matter what, you can get a line in where you say something like "Well, in this economy we are all worried about our jobs and I wonder how it will affect the bottom line the *next* time it happens." Or maybe something more like "I'm worried about how it will affect the business the next time it happens". If you can work in some information based on knowing what was lost, that will help.
The idea is to get them thinking about how losing that data affected their personal income. You also want to do a bit of subtle divide and conquer, never never bring the subject up with the one who lost the data. That one has a strong emotional need to believe that there were no negative consequences of his actions. The one who lost the data will make sure that no up policy ever goes into effect. Only the other owners can change his attitude or over ride his decisions.
If you do the job correctly you will come off as a conscientious employee who gets "the big picture". If not, you'll be seen as an obnoxious worrier who thinks he knows better than the owners. More importantly, in a week or two one or more of the owners will tell you about this new policy they are putting in place... Don't even think about saying that you guys already thought it up. This is one where the more you can make them think they thought it up, the better.
OTOH, if you have already been making lots a noise about this, start looking for a new job. You may have destroyed you future where you are and, hey, when one of them leaves the crown jewels on a plane and you biggest customer goes to you competition you're going to be looking for a new job anyway.
Been there, done that... Got promoted, got fired, left ahead of the creditors... And, a few times I was one of the owners.
Thank you again. Seriously, I value our communication and misscommunication.:-)
I have good friends whose families were on both sides of the Chinese civil war and have heard their stories. And, I have read histories of the Chinese civil war written by communists, nationalist, and by Americans who were there at the time. (Hey, I've even red the "Little Red Book" and "On Peoples War" by Mao.) I am also well aware of why the US values Taiwan. I'm also well aware of why we opened trade with China.
It is interesting that you were talking about Hong Kong and I was able to think you were talking about China. I really do worry about what is going on in China. And I do believe that currently China is much like the US in the late 1800s.
When I was in school I shared an office with several people. Two were from mainland China, one was from Taiwan, one from Japan, one from Long Island New York, two of us were from Utah, one from northern Idaho, one Iran (yeah, that long ago), one from Missouri, and one from New Jersey. By far the most foreign person in the room, that is the one I had the least in common with, was the guy from Long Island.:-) I found I had more in common with a Muslim from Tehran than with a guy from Long Island.
I bring this up for two reasons. The three Chinese got on just fine. The Taiwanese fellow had been in the US for several years and took special care to make sure the other Chinese had what they needed and how to live in the US. He also helped translate when their otherwise excellent English failed them.
The other thing is that there was this one Chinese fellow from the far northwestern part of China who didn't say a word to any westerner for the first 6 months or so that he was in the US. Oh, I guess he talked to his adviser, but that was about it.
One day he walked over to my desk, grabbed a chair and turned it around backwards. He sat down straddling the chair, put his hand on the back on the chair and rested his chin on his hands. He starred at me until I turned around and asked him if I could help him. He lifted his head up and said, in perfect almost unaccented English, "It is clear to me that the US does the best job of any nation caring for its people. But, I do not see how they do it. Can you explain this to me?"
I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. I have no idea why he asked me. But, we spent a lot of time over the next several years discussing economics, government, politics, and the different points of view of someone from a framing village in rural China and someone who grew up in a US city.
I learned a lot. He made me examine every assumption I had about how the US worked. And then he made me explain it. So that he felt he understood what I was talking about. He told me that he learned a lot too.
We both read the Constitution, something I now do every decade or so. And we read and discussed the Declaration of Independence, which I now do ever couple of years. And we just talked. He would ask a question and I would try to answer it. Then I would ask a question and so on.
Thanks for helping once again examine my assumptions.
Stonewolf
P.S.
One of the most peculiar talks we had is one that every American who knows people from outside the Americas eventually has. It was the gun question. Why do Americans have so many guns and why do you value them so much? The best answer I had was a quotation from Mao himself. I picked it up out of "The Little Red Book". "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'". When I first read it I was amazed that someone had to lecture communists on something that ever red blooded (and maybe red necked) American has known for generations.
Dude, I am so very glad to hear what you just said. You have no idea how happy I am to hear it.
But, I was already aware of the special position that Hong Kong has in China. I even mentioned it my last posting.
You claim that China is more capitalist that the US. And, up to a limit that is true. That is a big part of the problem. The US went through a laissez faire Capitalist period at the same time we had a very authoritarian government. State governors ordered the machine gunning of workers who had formed unions. We know all about the results of that kind of economic system coupled with an authoritarian government that only cares about making the rich richer. We are still fighting that battle...
We used to power of the vote, the freedom to organize, and the right to own guns to end that. Without those three rights and our willingness to use them we would never have ended that part of our history. With out those three rights we would never have ended Jim Crowe either and our current president would never have been allowed to get the education that he needed to become the great man he is.
We've spent 50 years cleaning up the destruction and the poison that resulted from our earlier actions. If we are careful and diligent we will still be working to clean up the mess a century from now.
As a Chinese citizen you do not even have the fiction of the human rights needed to correct the problems in your country. Even if you think of Hong Kong as separate, you are not. You are just a privileged part of China that is allowed to be the way you are because you make the rich and powerful in China more rich and powerful.
When the Chinese finally decided they had had enough of Taiwan the US wound up having to move nuclear armed carrier battle groups and submarines into position to block an invasion of Taiwan. No body but you can help you when your talk of freedom gets to loud and the Chinese army drives in to correct your thinking.
Look, I'm more familiar with China and Chinese culture than most Americans. I'm also aware of the special place Hong Kong has held in the world economy since before the British took it over and in China since it was returned to China. I also know so many Chinese who fled Hong Kong rather than voluntarily living under a Maoist government.
Family culture in China is very different from American family culture, except when it isn't. In my family there is no pressure to leave home until you are married, or even after that. But, there is no such thing as US family culture. The folks in the US with ancestors (recent or not) from China have a family culture a lot like that in China, except that it isn't because Chinese culture has adapted to US culture. My Welsh family culture is different from my 12th great grandfathers family culture for the simple fact that a culture suited to living in Wales since before the Romans invaded is not suited to a frontier. And that culture isn't suited to modern cities. We adapt. So do you.
The public transit system where I live is terrible for many reasons. The main one is that the people who vote don't want to pay for it and the government can't force them to. There we come to a very serious difference between the US and China. You simply can not compare a command economy run by a dictator to the economy of a republic like the US. The recent uproar over the use of cadmium as a substitute for lead in childrens toys sold in the US is a perfect example. Poisoning children is illegal in the US. Your folks got caught shipping toys with illegal levels of lead to the US. We stopped you. So, you substitute something even more poisonous. We have pulled toys off of store shelves that are so poisonous that they have to be disposed off at special plants. The manufacturer to the world. Yep, you make make a lot of money selling poison to children. Yeah, I know that isn't you. But, your government allows it.
How do you do it in China? You live in a command economy. There is little relationship between price and costs. There are no free labor unions. You have no voice in your government. It is a damn shame the spirit we saw at Tiananmen Square have died out. I know to many Chinese to think it has faded completely.
Back to the US. Yes, we spend a lot on our military. Maybe too much. We got in the habit at a time when the Japanese and the Nazis were trying to conquer the world. I know you studied WWII in school. Hey, we remember the Alamo... How do you remember Nanking? Not as bad as the holocaust, but that isn't saying much. Who got the Japanese off your back? Well, you did damn good job inside China, and we and the western allies took care of the rest of the job. I could go on. The 20th century was a horrible time and the US supplied a huge amount of the money, men, and material used to save the western world. We seem to be stuck with the job again. You guys... You just round up the Moslems in your country and murder them. Every time I go shopping I drive past a mosque where peaceful people gather to worship. When one went nuts and shot up Fort Hood people got mad. But, did we round Moslems and kill them? No, we did not. We made that mistake in the past. We do try to learn from our mistakes.
Ok, I'm ranting. I'll stop. I am baffled by the idea that anyone anywhere could try to compare the cost of living in a dictatorial communist command economy with the economy of any free country.
The sad thing is that you are a slave and you don't even know it.
The problem was caused by an accumulated round off error in the computation of elapsed time since the system was turned on. If the assumption was made the system would never operate long enough for it to matter that is a design flaw. No question about it. And, I do understand that the system was originally designed as an anti-aircraft system. An anti aircraft system designed to handle mach two aircraft.
The SCUD missiles are derived from the German A-4 (V2). The missile in question appears to be either a SCUD-B or an Al Hussein (derived from the SCUD-B). The SCUD-B is a third generation Soviet derivative of the A-4. (Equivalent to the US Redstone or Jupiter). The point is that the A-4 which first launched in October 1942 had a top speed of 3400 mph and an approach speed of 1790 mph. The best numbers I've been able to find for the Al Hussein give it a top speed of around 3350 mph. Just a little slower than a missile that was in use in WWII. In other words, the approach speed of these rockets is in the range between mach 2 and mach 3. Well within the speeds the Patriot was originally designed to handle.
None of the above invalidates my claims about the difference between a software "engineer" and a real engineer. Hey, it even points out the difference between a software guy and a real project manager. As you said, the requirements changed. Any engineer, or project manager, worth his pay would require a critical design review of all design decisions derived from the original requirements. This is exactly the kind of error made in that software that lead to the requirement that engineers pass a professional certification test. When engineers make mistakes bridges fall down, steam ships blow up, and airplanes fall out of the sky. When programmers make the same kind of mistakes the same things happen. In the case of the Patriot missile our soldiers died. But, guess what? No regulation of who can be a programmer ever got through congress. (Yes, it has been attempted over and over and over again.) Why? Because companies like IBM and Microsoft lobby like mad men to keep software developers from being certified. Then they lobby to keep exclude software from the same kind of liability protection that you have for every other kind of product.
When voting machines failed and courts ordered an examination of the source code the companies involved tried to hide behind trade secret protection. Same thing with breathalyzers.
Do some research. You'll find many cases where software errors that are the result of shoddy design and testing process lead to losses of cash and life.
Man, I was humming "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night..." Before I got half way down your post and then you mentioned the IWW.
I agree with you.
You are absolutely right that the programmer in India has more in common with me than the boss does. I've seen it over and over. Hell, I saw that when I *was* the boss.
So you are saying the problem is all the result of people who immigrated to the US since the 1960s? (I'm guessing '60s 'cause that's when Jim Crowe started to go down...)
I work with and teach people from every culture and economic class in the US. I do not see what you see. I do see a lot of lingering racism. But, mostly I see people who tell me that things are going to shit, but they just don't care.
Just to live you need about $30,000/year. Which is about twice what a full time worker makes at minimum wage.
if that's the case, then a minimum wage worker would have to do what i did for a while - work 2 jobs, get a roommate, and go to college. no one is stopping you from bettering yourself. it may take 10 years instead of 4 (as it did for me), but i graduated without any loans to repay and found companies were willing to pay me about 4-5 times more than i was used to making.
Well, that just proves I was not anywhere near clear enough.:-) I worked part time and full time for 10 years to get both a BSCS and an MSCS. I also got through without using any loans and $0 in debt. I completely agree that people with drive, talent, and a lot of luck can do what we did.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
The point I was making was that in the US someone working for minimum wage makes what a person with a technical degree makes in India. In the US it takes two people making that wage to make enough to survive. For that same level of income you can live nicely in Mumbai.
The cost structure in the US sucks. It is impossible to justify paying an American programmer $50k when you can hire an equally good Indian programmer $15K
...where I live in central Texas our entire society is designed around the assumption that you own a car and can pay $600++/month for housing...Seriously, do you have any suggestions?
is someone preventing you from moving closer to where you work? or finding a cheaper place to live? just because you're renting doesn't mean you're in debt.
Well, it's like this. I own a 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath house out right. The cost of taxes are less than 50% of cost of renting a 1 bedroom apartment. Since I haven't been able to find a full time job since 2001 when the job I had moved to Mumbai moving really wouldn't help and it would piss of my wife who really likes the house.:-) Obviously I'm getting by.
The point is that there are tens of thousands of people who have gotten degrees in the US who can not get jobs no matter what their degrees are. The only good thing I've seen recently is that the demand for CS education (where I currently make what little I make) has increased dramatically in the last 6 months so I'm making a little more.
You are right. But, I think you missed a major point about the overall lack of professionalism among programmers.
I have an MSCS and have worked as a software engineer. My wife has a BSME. To graduate she had to pass the EIT. If she didn't pass the test she couldn't graduate. No matter that she earned honors at graduation. No EIT no degree. Ten years later she took and passed the Professional Engineer exam. She has a little stamp that lets her give the legal ability to approval designs. She is legally liable for what she approves. I didn't have to pass any kind of professional exam to get the job title "engineer". I have no little stamp. I can not approve designs.
What does tht mean? I can write software that is used to design a dam. Any programmer no mater what their training and experience could have been hired to write that software. Lets say my software as a bug that causes it to give wrong answers for very large dams (used float when I should have used long double...) OTOH, only a PE can legally design a dam. If my wife uses my software and the dam bursts she is legally responsible, but I am not. Why is that?
I used to work for a Canadian PE. He had this little steel ring. The steel was from a bridge that fell down. Canadian engineers are all given (and I believe they are required to wear) a ring made from the steel of that fallen bridge so that their responsibility is always in their minds. There are many examples of people dying from software bugs. The failure of the patriot missiles during the first gulf war and the hundred+ dead soldier that resulted from and idiot not knowing that there is no such thing as 0.1 (one tenth) in binary. Why aren't programmer required to carry around a bit of the combat boot taken from one of those dead soldiers? Or, at least a vial of sand from where they died?
There are no professional standards for programmers or so called software engineers. There is no code of conduct or ethics for programmers. From the point of view of real engineers we are just a bunch of amateurs being allowed to play with dangerous toys.
I happen to be one of those people who hates to be in debt as a result I own my home. My property taxes on my house are more than $4,400/year. I know, I just wrote the checks for my taxes last year. Rent for a small apartment within 20 miles of here is about twice what I pay in taxes. Even at the $15,000 mentioned as the startingr salary for coders in India I can't pay my taxes, pay for water, gas, and electricity, still be able to eat. I could live here, pay my taxes, and eat if I steal wood and cook over a fire in my back yard. There is no public transport so I would have to walk everywhere until I was able to get a peddle cart. The nearest grocery store is three miles away and other stores are 5 or more miles away. There is a hospital only half a mile away:-)
What I am trying to say is that where I live in central Texas our entire society is designed around the assumption that you own a car and can pay $600++/month for housing. Just to live you need about $30,000/year. Which is about twice what a full time worker makes at minimum wage. That $30,000 doesn't get you much of a life. Central Texas is not expensive compared to a lot of place in the US.
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout the problem and start solving it? In the past Americans have been pretty good about banding together and solving problems. Where is the spirit that created credit unions as an alternative to corrupt and failed banks? Where the is the spirit that create the labor unions that gave us the standard of living we currently have? Where is the will to just say "NO MORE" and forced a corrupt racist government to end Jim Crowe. (OK, that is still ending, but from my point of view we have come a looooooooong way in the right direction.)
OK, before someone points it out... yes, I guilty of not doing anything too. At least I'm asklng the question.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I don't know how true this is but I'm hearing that families in Mexico have started sending money to their relatives in the US to help them survive the recession.
Telling you about my background in law was intended to give you the idea that even a well read and educated layman does not know enough about the law to be able to do business without a lawyer. The more I learn about the law, the more I realize that I need a lawyer.
As far as anonymity goes... Well, what can I say? I actually spent 5 years doing research in network technology for Fortune 100 telecom company. I learned way too much about the *law* covering what information ISPs are required to keep and for how long they have to keep it. I also understand the power of a subpoena. I also understand the persistence of investigators who are being paid to find evidence against you.
If you believe that what you are doing on/. is anonymous or you believe that it can't be found and tied to you and you alone, then you are hopelessly naive.
Morally speaking? The general consensus seems to be that there is such a thing as intellectual property. In the moral traditions I'm familiar with theft is considered to be immoral. The words "Thou shalt not steal" (Christian tradition attributed to God) and "Do not take that which is not given" (Buddhist tradition attributed to Buddha) pretty well establish that theft is a violation of a moral principle. Put the two together and morally speaking it appears that taking other peoples intellectual property is considered to be immoral. That attitude has been implemented in the laws of most countries and been placed into international law by a series of treaties going back over a hundred years.
Just to drive home the point... The Constitution of the United States has copyright and patents in the core of the constitution. Little things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on had to be added as amendments. Why? Because everyone, even Jefferson finally agreed that they were a good idea. Not everyone liked the idea of freedom of speech.
As far as I can see your entire last paragraph is nothing but you using your own arrogance to rationalize theft. I'm sure the game is "demonstrably better" in your mind and the minds of your cronies. Whether it is in fact demonstrably better is a matter of taste, not a matter of law or a matter of morality. As for your loss versus the other guys loss, well so what? Do you think the time spent digging a tunnel into a bank vault in any way ameliorates the damage done by robbing a bank? Its the same argument.
Now, if you had said "inspired by" rather than "clone" I'd just have advised you to make sure you aren't in danger of treading on any trademarks and been done with it. "Inspired by" is perfectly acceptable, "cloning" is not.
Look, I know you don't want to believe what we are saying. You have a lot riding on this. Trouble is I learned all I know about law as the result of being to near too many suits. When I was young and naive I actually got fooled into giving a deposition that was being collected as preparation for a suit against all the people who had founders stock in a company. I was one of those people. (I was a founder and I walked away from the company when I found out they were doing some seriously illegal shit.) Hard to believe but I got fooled into giving evidence against myself. In a civil suit in the jurisdiction we were in what they did was perfectly legal and arguably moral.
Slashdot Mirror
How hard is it to immegrate to Australia? My wife and I qualify for Canada but it is really cold there...
So you're saying software products need to back port all the features from new versions to older versions for free for you otherwise they are greedy capitalists?
No, not at all. I'm a greedy Capitalist and I would go broke if I did what you suggest.
Reading the two replies to my original posting I realize that I did not state one of my assumptions. A browser is not a feature of the operating system. Neither is a graphics library. They are add on packages that can be modified, expanded, and rewritten as many times as you like without having to add any new features to the OS.
Consider the differences between Netscape 1.1 from the middle '90s and Firefox 3.6. Hugely different applications. Did anyone have to add any new features to Windows to support those browsers? Nope. Sure, they used new features when they came along. But I'm not aware of any changes made to the OS to support those browsers.
Now, MS comes along in 2010 and says they can not provide IE 10 for XP. How can I accept a statement like that as anything but a bald faced lie?
Another example would be OpenGL versus DirectX3d. You do need certain things in an OS to implement a high performance graphics library. You must have loadable device drivers.
Once you have those you can implement any number of different graphics libraries that are completely independent of the OS. For most of the last 20 or so years OpenGL has run on Windows without the need of any special features being added to the OS. And, yet MS claims that DirectX3d is part of the OS.
If you look at the history of MS and antitrust prosecutions you will find that the courts seem to be quite consistent on refusing to accept the idea that a browser is part of the OS. So, I am not alone in this view.
The capitalist in me wants a level playing field in which I can compete on the merits of my product. I do not want to be faced with artificial barriers. The level playing field is so important to capitalism that most countries have laws that try to prevent artificial monopolies. Using monopoly power to force people to buy a product is completely against the basic concepts on which American Capitalism is based. It is also illegal.
When MS claims that something is part of the OS, when it clearly is not. And, they then use the lack of that feature as a means to force people to buy a new product. They are not being capitalists. they are being thieves. They are, in my view, subverting and denigrating capitalism. In my view MS is the Goldman-Sachs of the software world. Neither organization has a close relationship with capitalism.
What makes this all even more absurd is that 7 is selling extremely well and, IMHO, would sell very well without MS trying to coerce their customers into buy it. Why is it selling so well? Because it is a damn nice OS. I plan on buying a copy after SP1 ships. You might notice that I am not what you would call an MS fan. But, I use MS Office because it is an exceptional product. Even though I run Linux on 5 out of my 6 PCs I do have one running XP just so I can run MS Office.
Oh, one last thing. MS does not make any money off of EI because they give it away. Other than as means of coercing customers they have no profit motive for *not* providing EI 10 on XP. I do not believe their is actually any cost to them for providing IE 10 on XP because there is no technical reason for there to be a cost. It there really is a cost involved it is due to either incompetence or due to MS's attempts at circumventing antitrust laws.
To make it even more ridiculous, their policy on which versions of DirectX are available on different versions of Windows has forced the game industry DirectX 10 and 11. Until the percentage of customers running XP drops significantly (last numbers I found show that 70+% of Windows users still use XP) only games aimed at the small group of hardcore gamers will even pretend to use anything but DirectX 9. The reality is that a number of games that need DirectX 10 and 11 feature
Good question.
My understanding of the term "customer base" is that it refers to everyone who has purchased your products in the past. If you don't see it that way, then what I said will not make much sense.
Stonewolf
Ah yes, the old typo attack.
If you have no other way of attacking the information you are presented with you attack the typos and spelling errors. This kind of attack was outlawed by netiquette before I got my first email address back in '81.
For your information I am a published author and well respected public speaker. Over the last 30 years I have been paid for every single item I have submitted for publication. And, that is a bunch. Not to mention that even though I am a software developer I have been given the task to teaching basic writing skills to people I work with, and in a few cases, for.
Your problem is that sometime in your life someone gave you the fallacious ideas that 1) the grammar rules your learned in school actually have a connection with reality, and 2) good spelling is a sign of intelligence.
They don't and it isn't.
Stonewolf
LOL! Good example. OTOH, we now seem to have a good theory, based on lots of data, evolutionary psychology, and game theory, to understand the differences between those two groups.
My experience it that Republicans refuse to even look at the theory and simply assume the data is rigged while Democrats do examine the theory, and then express a desire to help the poor Republicans.
Stonewolf
If you are ever able to progress past your current level of reasoning you will remember that post and be very very glad that you posted anonymously. I strongly recommend that until you understand how inane your response was that you not ever post using your real name.
Stonewolf
It is literally impossible... in the same sentence where they list two ways to do it.
My bogosity meter just blew up.
What they are saying is that they can't do it without spending more money on it than they want to. More accurately they are saying that they want to get people to move from XP to 7. They do not make a dime pushing out a patch for XP. In fact, doing that costs them money. OTOH, if they refuse to provide features on XP such as DIrectX 10 and 11, and now IE 9 a bunch of people run out and buy Windows 7 either in a box or in a new computer and that mean income for MS.
Do you remember when it was "impossible" to release DirectX 10 for XP? It was impossible for MS to do it, a bunch of "amateurs" did it almost no time at all. That is, by the time I had heard the news one of my students had already installed DirectX on XP and was running the demos that came with it.
Have you looked at a list of the games that only support DirectX 10 and/or 11 that will not run on any version of DirectX 9? The list is very short. Shorter than this post... So, what is really happening is that MS was abandoning its real customer base, the 72% of windows users who use Windows XP. They don't make money off of them so they have no interest in spending money on them. You know why their are so few DirectX 10 and 11 games? Because 72% of Windows user are running XP. The game companies have to write code for machines their customers have. In fact, a lot of smaller companies are moving to OpenGL because they can get all the new 3D features of DIrectX 10 and 11 on XP. sheesh...
It is unbelievable what a company is so certain of retaining its customers that it can abandon them and mistreat them and still assume they will be customers in the future. But, they can because they own the *minds* of their customers.
Well... I notice I'm starting to rant... so...
Stonewolf
OK, just one last rant... I've had to explain to a students that memorizing the DIrectX API would not help him write games for his favorite game box, the PS 3. He called me a liar. His world view did not include a computer that ran an OS other than Windows or a game that was written using any thing but DirectX. It is so sad...
Of course in their case it just that they are too stupid to breath.
Their site works fine with Linux and Firefox, but they deliberately refuse to work with anything but Windows and Mac. Spoofing the user agent string lets the site work perfectly with any OS and pretty much any browser. They tell me they do this for "security" but it doesn't actually work that way.
Yeah, a bit off topic. But, I posted this as an example of the hold MS has on the *minds* of their customers. I've gotten fairly high up into Citi banks IT folks by being polite and telling their customer service people that what they just told me doesn't make any sense. That it goes against the very mathematical basis of computer science that governs the way networks and computers work. And then demanding a valid explanation. You have say things like, "Yes, I understand that that is what you were told, and I know you are not lying to me. But, you have been lied to, and you don't have the technical training you would need to know that. Please put me through to someone who can answer my question or cancel my account." That works, especially if you are willing to try to explain what is really going on. So, after many hours I finally get to a guy who is so locked into the idea the MS is Lord and Linux is the Devil that even though he is very technical he can not think reasonably about my question.
I've had several similar experience in my life. Trying to explain to a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim that not believing in his God does not make you an Atheist is a lot like trying to explain to that guy why Linux is not evil.
Belief is not subject to rational discussion.
Stonewolf
What liberty are you planning to give up?
It would help me to understand your answer if you include information about your age, your level of education, and your personal wealth. Oh yeah, since you are posting about the health insurance reform bill it would help to know if you have ever suffered from a long term illness or ever lost a job because of the cost of health insurance.
Seriously, I want to know where you are coming from.
Me, I 57. I have a Masters (non terminal) in Computer Science. My net worth is around 3/4 million. I have health insurance through my wifes job. I am uninsurable. I can't buy health insurance for any price. I am currently under treatment for persistent prostatitis caused by prostate stones. I have prostate stones because I changed jobs and did not have coverage for a preexisting condition known as GERD. I have GERD as a result of a hiatal hernia. How did I get a hiatal hernia? I was born with it. So, technically I was born with a preexisting condition. I'm lucky I ever had health insurance. What about COBRA you say? Well I did get COBRA coverage for my child with epilepsy. But COBRA is very expensive and I could not afford it for the whole family. Well then why did I change jobs? Well... it was a start up funded by a Japanese company. I jumped to a contract position at IBM. That also got shut down. I was out of work for a while then but I was able to find a job that paid 60% of what I had been making. That as during the recession in the early '90s so I felt lucky to have a job at all. That also got shut down. Anyway, I could afford the meds I needed for GERD. But then it got worse and I could not afford to see a specialist to get the prescription changed. So, being young and foolish (my early 40s) I just took commercial antacids to supplement the meds.
Antacids contain a lot of calcium and eating too much calcium can give you stones in the oddest places. You think of stones and you thing of kidney stones or gal stones. You think of lots of pain. But, you also know there are some pretty good treatments.
You know how you get rid of prostate stones? You might pass a few, they tend to be very small. You've heard of the pain of passing a kidney stone. Well imagine that pain, if you can, happening every time you make love or jerk off. But, short of removing the prostate you don't get rid of the stones. Have you ever broken a bone? Had appendicitis? Been shot? Had a baby? I met a lot of people who can not imagine serious pain because they have never experienced it.
Guess what? Those stones serve as homes for bacteria. Normally you can cure a prostate infection with 2 weeks of a generic antibiotic. If you have stones... well, the first time I got a prostate infection it took a year of treatment to clear it up. A year of alternating antibiotics. Usually two different antibiotics at a time. I was sure lucky that it was not considered to be a preexisting condition. Wow, That would have been a bitch. The antibiotics cost as much as a $1000 dollars a month.
All that just because I had an uncovered preexisting condition for one year. Yeah, I had insurance while I was taking all those antacids. It just didn't cover my preexisting condition.
Oh by the way, if I had been uninsured when I had that year long infection I still would have gotten treatment. It would not have been as good, and it would have taken a lot more time. And, it would not have cost me a dime. You see, I live in the US where we have the most absurd form of universal health care in the world. If you show up at an emergency room and are sick or injured, they must treat you. Then they can try to collect the money from you. If you don't pay... well eventually the debt goes away. Yeah, there is a statute of limitation on debt in most of the US. Here in Texas it is 4 years. So, of course the emergency room would stop serving me if I don't pay, right? Nope, not allowed by law. Guess who pays for all of that unpaid for health care? We do, you and I. Why do you think it costs so much to go to a hosp
I got to see the Challenger launch before NASA and Thiokol blew it up. I was at the launch of STS-41B. I was an officer in a chapter of the AIAA that sponsored a get away special canister (G-008) that flew on Challenger carrying experiments put together by local high school and college students.
The engineer who blew the whistle on the deadly o-rings was a member of our chapter. We held a special meeting in hist honor. Funny, isn't it, that just behaving according the expected standards of your profession can make you a hero. But, it is true, so few people live up to the minimal expected standards of morality or professionalism that when someone does it proves that they are a hero.
What a lot of us learned from the destruction of the Challenger and her crew was that NASA lies. (I'm not talking about the idiots who think we never went to the moon... god what idiots...) I'm talking about the kind of lies they tell to get what they want. They lie about what projects will cost. They lie about safety. They lie about performance. Can anyone name a successful space launch vehicle created by NASA in the last 20 years? (And, no, the shuttle doesn't count. That project started, officially, around 1966. In reality it started a lot earlier. Maybe as far back as the late 1930s or early 1940s.) I can't. I can give you a long list of failed projects. Even NASA's very successful Mars explores caught a ride on commercial Delta IIs.
NASA is primarily in the business of keeping its self alive. NASA is not in the business of exploring space. In fact, it has worked hard to keep people who wanted to explore space, or do business in space, or even build a high performance rocket, from being able to do any thing. It took decades to the legal system in place that is needed to allow private operations. It took decades not because our representatives didn't try, but because NASA with the help of the DOD worked as hard as they possibly could spreading FUD to stop the laws from passing. I know you won't believe me on this. So what, ask Jerry Pournelle he has been following and reporting on NASA's lies for longer than anyone. Go ahead, ask him. (No his is not a friend of mine. But, he is the guy who taught me about 75% of what I know about flame wars. Yeah, back in the days of the ARPA net...)
Ever wondered why space shuttles are so damned expensive? Ever wondered why there are so few of them? Ever wondered who owns the shuttles and the tooling to make space shuttles? If you ask you'll be told that there are so few of them because they are so expensive. They are so expensive because they are so high tech and complex. And, of course, everyone knows that NASA owns the shuttles and everything having to do with them. How about this question "Why do the space shuttles have a hypersonic glide capability with a 1500 mile cross range capability?" A cargo van doesn't need to be able to drive like a formula 1 race car. Giving the space shuttle those capabilities added weight, reduced payload, and dramatically increased its cost. So, why did they do it? BTW, One of the last shuttle designs considered, before the current design, reentered with the body and wings perpendicular to its direction of travel and only switched to gliding, rather than falling, after slowed to below mach one. It had a landing speed as slow, or slower, than a commercial airliner and could land on any runway and was not capable of flying at supersonic speed.
When you start saying that only NASA can build a manned space craft please remember that NASA approved the designs of the original Apollo that cremated its crew. They also approved the design of the space shuttle that has so far killed two crews in 134 flights. If a commercial aircraft had that kind of safety record in testing it would never be allowed to operate. Home built aircraft have a better safety record because of the inspection requirements for licensing. Even the X-15 which was a purely experimental aircraft that was deliberately flown at speeds and altitudes never before reached by any manned
"We" created a policy.... Did the we include all of the owners? If not, did it include any of the owners? If not, who the hell do you think you are?
Seriously, an employee trying to make a policy for an owner looks a lot like a 2 year old trying to set policy for his grandparents. Not his parents... that isn't strong enough.
The art of managing "up" is difficult to learn and very hard to do. If you get caught doing it you may be fired of the spot for insubordination. The charge will stick.
One way to approach it is to keep track of how long it has been since *any* owners laptop has been backed up. After a month or two when you just happen to be talking to X (one of the owners) you say something like "What did it cost you when that data on Y's laptop was lost?". That might lead to an interesting discussion. Or, you might hear "None of your business" or "That is above your pay grade". No matter what, you can get a line in where you say something like "Well, in this economy we are all worried about our jobs and I wonder how it will affect the bottom line the *next* time it happens." Or maybe something more like "I'm worried about how it will affect the business the next time it happens". If you can work in some information based on knowing what was lost, that will help.
The idea is to get them thinking about how losing that data affected their personal income. You also want to do a bit of subtle divide and conquer, never never bring the subject up with the one who lost the data. That one has a strong emotional need to believe that there were no negative consequences of his actions. The one who lost the data will make sure that no up policy ever goes into effect. Only the other owners can change his attitude or over ride his decisions.
If you do the job correctly you will come off as a conscientious employee who gets "the big picture". If not, you'll be seen as an obnoxious worrier who thinks he knows better than the owners. More importantly, in a week or two one or more of the owners will tell you about this new policy they are putting in place... Don't even think about saying that you guys already thought it up. This is one where the more you can make them think they thought it up, the better.
OTOH, if you have already been making lots a noise about this, start looking for a new job. You may have destroyed you future where you are and, hey, when one of them leaves the crown jewels on a plane and you biggest customer goes to you competition you're going to be looking for a new job anyway.
Been there, done that... Got promoted, got fired, left ahead of the creditors... And, a few times I was one of the owners.
Stonewolf
Thank you again. Seriously, I value our communication and misscommunication. :-)
I have good friends whose families were on both sides of the Chinese civil war and have heard their stories. And, I have read histories of the Chinese civil war written by communists, nationalist, and by Americans who were there at the time. (Hey, I've even red the "Little Red Book" and "On Peoples War" by Mao.) I am also well aware of why the US values Taiwan. I'm also well aware of why we opened trade with China.
It is interesting that you were talking about Hong Kong and I was able to think you were talking about China. I really do worry about what is going on in China. And I do believe that currently China is much like the US in the late 1800s.
When I was in school I shared an office with several people. Two were from mainland China, one was from Taiwan, one from Japan, one from Long Island New York, two of us were from Utah, one from northern Idaho, one Iran (yeah, that long ago), one from Missouri, and one from New Jersey. By far the most foreign person in the room, that is the one I had the least in common with, was the guy from Long Island. :-) I found I had more in common with a Muslim from Tehran than with a guy from Long Island.
I bring this up for two reasons. The three Chinese got on just fine. The Taiwanese fellow had been in the US for several years and took special care to make sure the other Chinese had what they needed and how to live in the US. He also helped translate when their otherwise excellent English failed them.
The other thing is that there was this one Chinese fellow from the far northwestern part of China who didn't say a word to any westerner for the first 6 months or so that he was in the US. Oh, I guess he talked to his adviser, but that was about it.
One day he walked over to my desk, grabbed a chair and turned it around backwards. He sat down straddling the chair, put his hand on the back on the chair and rested his chin on his hands. He starred at me until I turned around and asked him if I could help him. He lifted his head up and said, in perfect almost unaccented English, "It is clear to me that the US does the best job of any nation caring for its people. But, I do not see how they do it. Can you explain this to me?"
I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. I have no idea why he asked me. But, we spent a lot of time over the next several years discussing economics, government, politics, and the different points of view of someone from a framing village in rural China and someone who grew up in a US city.
I learned a lot. He made me examine every assumption I had about how the US worked. And then he made me explain it. So that he felt he understood what I was talking about. He told me that he learned a lot too.
We both read the Constitution, something I now do every decade or so. And we read and discussed the Declaration of Independence, which I now do ever couple of years. And we just talked. He would ask a question and I would try to answer it. Then I would ask a question and so on.
Thanks for helping once again examine my assumptions.
Stonewolf
P.S.
One of the most peculiar talks we had is one that every American who knows people from outside the Americas eventually has. It was the gun question. Why do Americans have so many guns and why do you value them so much? The best answer I had was a quotation from Mao himself. I picked it up out of "The Little Red Book". "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'". When I first read it I was amazed that someone had to lecture communists on something that ever red blooded (and maybe red necked) American has known for generations.
Dude, I am so very glad to hear what you just said. You have no idea how happy I am to hear it.
But, I was already aware of the special position that Hong Kong has in China. I even mentioned it my last posting.
You claim that China is more capitalist that the US. And, up to a limit that is true. That is a big part of the problem. The US went through a laissez faire Capitalist period at the same time we had a very authoritarian government. State governors ordered the machine gunning of workers who had formed unions. We know all about the results of that kind of economic system coupled with an authoritarian government that only cares about making the rich richer. We are still fighting that battle...
We used to power of the vote, the freedom to organize, and the right to own guns to end that. Without those three rights and our willingness to use them we would never have ended that part of our history. With out those three rights we would never have ended Jim Crowe either and our current president would never have been allowed to get the education that he needed to become the great man he is.
We've spent 50 years cleaning up the destruction and the poison that resulted from our earlier actions. If we are careful and diligent we will still be working to clean up the mess a century from now.
As a Chinese citizen you do not even have the fiction of the human rights needed to correct the problems in your country. Even if you think of Hong Kong as separate, you are not. You are just a privileged part of China that is allowed to be the way you are because you make the rich and powerful in China more rich and powerful.
When the Chinese finally decided they had had enough of Taiwan the US wound up having to move nuclear armed carrier battle groups and submarines into position to block an invasion of Taiwan. No body but you can help you when your talk of freedom gets to loud and the Chinese army drives in to correct your thinking.
Stonewolf
Look, I'm more familiar with China and Chinese culture than most Americans. I'm also aware of the special place Hong Kong has held in the world economy since before the British took it over and in China since it was returned to China. I also know so many Chinese who fled Hong Kong rather than voluntarily living under a Maoist government.
Family culture in China is very different from American family culture, except when it isn't. In my family there is no pressure to leave home until you are married, or even after that. But, there is no such thing as US family culture. The folks in the US with ancestors (recent or not) from China have a family culture a lot like that in China, except that it isn't because Chinese culture has adapted to US culture. My Welsh family culture is different from my 12th great grandfathers family culture for the simple fact that a culture suited to living in Wales since before the Romans invaded is not suited to a frontier. And that culture isn't suited to modern cities. We adapt. So do you.
The public transit system where I live is terrible for many reasons. The main one is that the people who vote don't want to pay for it and the government can't force them to. There we come to a very serious difference between the US and China. You simply can not compare a command economy run by a dictator to the economy of a republic like the US. The recent uproar over the use of cadmium as a substitute for lead in childrens toys sold in the US is a perfect example. Poisoning children is illegal in the US. Your folks got caught shipping toys with illegal levels of lead to the US. We stopped you. So, you substitute something even more poisonous. We have pulled toys off of store shelves that are so poisonous that they have to be disposed off at special plants. The manufacturer to the world. Yep, you make make a lot of money selling poison to children. Yeah, I know that isn't you. But, your government allows it.
How do you do it in China? You live in a command economy. There is little relationship between price and costs. There are no free labor unions. You have no voice in your government. It is a damn shame the spirit we saw at Tiananmen Square have died out. I know to many Chinese to think it has faded completely.
Back to the US. Yes, we spend a lot on our military. Maybe too much. We got in the habit at a time when the Japanese and the Nazis were trying to conquer the world. I know you studied WWII in school. Hey, we remember the Alamo... How do you remember Nanking? Not as bad as the holocaust, but that isn't saying much. Who got the Japanese off your back? Well, you did damn good job inside China, and we and the western allies took care of the rest of the job. I could go on. The 20th century was a horrible time and the US supplied a huge amount of the money, men, and material used to save the western world. We seem to be stuck with the job again. You guys... You just round up the Moslems in your country and murder them. Every time I go shopping I drive past a mosque where peaceful people gather to worship. When one went nuts and shot up Fort Hood people got mad. But, did we round Moslems and kill them? No, we did not. We made that mistake in the past. We do try to learn from our mistakes.
Ok, I'm ranting. I'll stop. I am baffled by the idea that anyone anywhere could try to compare the cost of living in a dictatorial communist command economy with the economy of any free country.
The sad thing is that you are a slave and you don't even know it.
Stonewolf.
Spelling comments were declared to be a violation of netiquette back before there was an Internet.
Stonewolf
Hey, thanks for that link.
Stonewolf
Interesting response.
The problem was caused by an accumulated round off error in the computation of elapsed time since the system was turned on. If the assumption was made the system would never operate long enough for it to matter that is a design flaw. No question about it. And, I do understand that the system was originally designed as an anti-aircraft system. An anti aircraft system designed to handle mach two aircraft.
The SCUD missiles are derived from the German A-4 (V2). The missile in question appears to be either a SCUD-B or an Al Hussein (derived from the SCUD-B). The SCUD-B is a third generation Soviet derivative of the A-4. (Equivalent to the US Redstone or Jupiter). The point is that the A-4 which first launched in October 1942 had a top speed of 3400 mph and an approach speed of 1790 mph. The best numbers I've been able to find for the Al Hussein give it a top speed of around 3350 mph. Just a little slower than a missile that was in use in WWII. In other words, the approach speed of these rockets is in the range between mach 2 and mach 3. Well within the speeds the Patriot was originally designed to handle.
None of the above invalidates my claims about the difference between a software "engineer" and a real engineer. Hey, it even points out the difference between a software guy and a real project manager. As you said, the requirements changed. Any engineer, or project manager, worth his pay would require a critical design review of all design decisions derived from the original requirements. This is exactly the kind of error made in that software that lead to the requirement that engineers pass a professional certification test. When engineers make mistakes bridges fall down, steam ships blow up, and airplanes fall out of the sky. When programmers make the same kind of mistakes the same things happen. In the case of the Patriot missile our soldiers died. But, guess what? No regulation of who can be a programmer ever got through congress. (Yes, it has been attempted over and over and over again.) Why? Because companies like IBM and Microsoft lobby like mad men to keep software developers from being certified. Then they lobby to keep exclude software from the same kind of liability protection that you have for every other kind of product.
When voting machines failed and courts ordered an examination of the source code the companies involved tried to hide behind trade secret protection. Same thing with breathalyzers.
Do some research. You'll find many cases where software errors that are the result of shoddy design and testing process lead to losses of cash and life.
Software Engineering. What a joke.
Stonewolf
Man, I was humming "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night..." Before I got half way down your post and then you mentioned the IWW.
I agree with you.
You are absolutely right that the programmer in India has more in common with me than the boss does. I've seen it over and over. Hell, I saw that when I *was* the boss.
So, that is one idea. Will anyone else help?
Stonewolf
So you are saying the problem is all the result of people who immigrated to the US since the 1960s? (I'm guessing '60s 'cause that's when Jim Crowe started to go down...)
I work with and teach people from every culture and economic class in the US. I do not see what you see. I do see a lot of lingering racism. But, mostly I see people who tell me that things are going to shit, but they just don't care.
Stonewolf
if that's the case, then a minimum wage worker would have to do what i did for a while - work 2 jobs, get a roommate, and go to college. no one is stopping you from bettering yourself. it may take 10 years instead of 4 (as it did for me), but i graduated without any loans to repay and found companies were willing to pay me about 4-5 times more than i was used to making.
Well, that just proves I was not anywhere near clear enough. :-) I worked part time and full time for 10 years to get both a BSCS and an MSCS. I also got through without using any loans and $0 in debt. I completely agree that people with drive, talent, and a lot of luck can do what we did.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make.
The point I was making was that in the US someone working for minimum wage makes what a person with a technical degree makes in India. In the US it takes two people making that wage to make enough to survive. For that same level of income you can live nicely in Mumbai.
The cost structure in the US sucks. It is impossible to justify paying an American programmer $50k when you can hire an equally good Indian programmer $15K
is someone preventing you from moving closer to where you work? or finding a cheaper place to live? just because you're renting doesn't mean you're in debt.
Well, it's like this. I own a 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath house out right. The cost of taxes are less than 50% of cost of renting a 1 bedroom apartment. Since I haven't been able to find a full time job since 2001 when the job I had moved to Mumbai moving really wouldn't help and it would piss of my wife who really likes the house. :-) Obviously I'm getting by.
The point is that there are tens of thousands of people who have gotten degrees in the US who can not get jobs no matter what their degrees are. The only good thing I've seen recently is that the demand for CS education (where I currently make what little I make) has increased dramatically in the last 6 months so I'm making a little more.
Stonewolf
You are right. But, I think you missed a major point about the overall lack of professionalism among programmers.
I have an MSCS and have worked as a software engineer. My wife has a BSME. To graduate she had to pass the EIT. If she didn't pass the test she couldn't graduate. No matter that she earned honors at graduation. No EIT no degree. Ten years later she took and passed the Professional Engineer exam. She has a little stamp that lets her give the legal ability to approval designs. She is legally liable for what she approves. I didn't have to pass any kind of professional exam to get the job title "engineer". I have no little stamp. I can not approve designs.
What does tht mean? I can write software that is used to design a dam. Any programmer no mater what their training and experience could have been hired to write that software. Lets say my software as a bug that causes it to give wrong answers for very large dams (used float when I should have used long double...) OTOH, only a PE can legally design a dam. If my wife uses my software and the dam bursts she is legally responsible, but I am not. Why is that?
I used to work for a Canadian PE. He had this little steel ring. The steel was from a bridge that fell down. Canadian engineers are all given (and I believe they are required to wear) a ring made from the steel of that fallen bridge so that their responsibility is always in their minds. There are many examples of people dying from software bugs. The failure of the patriot missiles during the first gulf war and the hundred+ dead soldier that resulted from and idiot not knowing that there is no such thing as 0.1 (one tenth) in binary. Why aren't programmer required to carry around a bit of the combat boot taken from one of those dead soldiers? Or, at least a vial of sand from where they died?
There are no professional standards for programmers or so called software engineers. There is no code of conduct or ethics for programmers. From the point of view of real engineers we are just a bunch of amateurs being allowed to play with dangerous toys.
Stonewolf
I happen to be one of those people who hates to be in debt as a result I own my home. My property taxes on my house are more than $4,400/year. I know, I just wrote the checks for my taxes last year. Rent for a small apartment within 20 miles of here is about twice what I pay in taxes. Even at the $15,000 mentioned as the startingr salary for coders in India I can't pay my taxes, pay for water, gas, and electricity, still be able to eat. I could live here, pay my taxes, and eat if I steal wood and cook over a fire in my back yard. There is no public transport so I would have to walk everywhere until I was able to get a peddle cart. The nearest grocery store is three miles away and other stores are 5 or more miles away. There is a hospital only half a mile away :-)
What I am trying to say is that where I live in central Texas our entire society is designed around the assumption that you own a car and can pay $600++/month for housing. Just to live you need about $30,000/year. Which is about twice what a full time worker makes at minimum wage. That $30,000 doesn't get you much of a life. Central Texas is not expensive compared to a lot of place in the US.
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout the problem and start solving it? In the past Americans have been pretty good about banding together and solving problems. Where is the spirit that created credit unions as an alternative to corrupt and failed banks? Where the is the spirit that create the labor unions that gave us the standard of living we currently have? Where is the will to just say "NO MORE" and forced a corrupt racist government to end Jim Crowe. (OK, that is still ending, but from my point of view we have come a looooooooong way in the right direction.)
OK, before someone points it out... yes, I guilty of not doing anything too. At least I'm asklng the question.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I don't know how true this is but I'm hearing that families in Mexico have started sending money to their relatives in the US to help them survive the recession.
Telling you about my background in law was intended to give you the idea that even a well read and educated layman does not know enough about the law to be able to do business without a lawyer. The more I learn about the law, the more I realize that I need a lawyer.
As far as anonymity goes... Well, what can I say? I actually spent 5 years doing research in network technology for Fortune 100 telecom company. I learned way too much about the *law* covering what information ISPs are required to keep and for how long they have to keep it. I also understand the power of a subpoena. I also understand the persistence of investigators who are being paid to find evidence against you.
If you believe that what you are doing on /. is anonymous or you believe that it can't be found and tied to you and you alone, then you are hopelessly naive.
Morally speaking? The general consensus seems to be that there is such a thing as intellectual property. In the moral traditions I'm familiar with theft is considered to be immoral. The words "Thou shalt not steal" (Christian tradition attributed to God) and "Do not take that which is not given" (Buddhist tradition attributed to Buddha) pretty well establish that theft is a violation of a moral principle. Put the two together and morally speaking it appears that taking other peoples intellectual property is considered to be immoral. That attitude has been implemented in the laws of most countries and been placed into international law by a series of treaties going back over a hundred years.
Just to drive home the point... The Constitution of the United States has copyright and patents in the core of the constitution. Little things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on had to be added as amendments. Why? Because everyone, even Jefferson finally agreed that they were a good idea. Not everyone liked the idea of freedom of speech.
As far as I can see your entire last paragraph is nothing but you using your own arrogance to rationalize theft. I'm sure the game is "demonstrably better" in your mind and the minds of your cronies. Whether it is in fact demonstrably better is a matter of taste, not a matter of law or a matter of morality. As for your loss versus the other guys loss, well so what? Do you think the time spent digging a tunnel into a bank vault in any way ameliorates the damage done by robbing a bank? Its the same argument.
Now, if you had said "inspired by" rather than "clone" I'd just have advised you to make sure you aren't in danger of treading on any trademarks and been done with it. "Inspired by" is perfectly acceptable, "cloning" is not.
Look, I know you don't want to believe what we are saying. You have a lot riding on this. Trouble is I learned all I know about law as the result of being to near too many suits. When I was young and naive I actually got fooled into giving a deposition that was being collected as preparation for a suit against all the people who had founders stock in a company. I was one of those people. (I was a founder and I walked away from the company when I found out they were doing some seriously illegal shit.) Hard to believe but I got fooled into giving evidence against myself. In a civil suit in the jurisdiction we were in what they did was perfectly legal and arguably moral.
Stonewolf
My wife and I make it sport...
Where would that be?
Stonewolf