Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff weeks (sometimes months) before public pronouncements.
During the two years I worked there, I worked on at least 5 different projects that were subsequently canceled. Motorola does not believe in canceling projects efficiently. What happens is that funding for the project dries up, and the politically savvy guys get out. The naive ones (I was one for a while) show up to work and keep working, desperately trying to fix bugs etc while their bosses try to feign interest.
Motorola does not have much longer to run. Samsung and Nokia will kick their asses.
We use lots of Windriver In Circuit Emulators (ICEs) at my current position. Windriver sells 6-inch connector cables for US$150.00. Now these cables are nothing special, just flat straight-through cables (sort of like the PC hard-disc cables), but they have non-standard connectors at the ends.
Anyone know someone who sells these cables for less?
Market cap of Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, Nokia combined: = 105 Billion $.
The telecomm industry is hurting, and Microsoft is using every dirty trick in the book to muscle in. They are using their tremendous market cap and huge cash reservers to cajole, bribe, threaten and intimidate the various players. They are doling out large amounts of cash to the service providers (esp 2^nd tier providers like Sprint) to support the Smartphones on the network, and the service provides, who are fighting for their own survival, are in no position to resist.
If they succeed, the Cellphone hardware will be another commodity item with the manufacturers having to subsist on wafer-thin margins, and Microsoft will get $50.00 for every phone sold.
You are being facetious, but if you were in the Telecom industry before 2000, and if you are unemployed now, Bush did really take away your job.
See, what happened was this: there were these companies called "Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" (CLECs) that were the product of the Telecom de-regulation acts. They were supposed to be able to out-compete the entrenched Phone Companies (ILECs) by offering innovative services.
The entire telecom boom of the late 90s arose due to the promise offered by these CLECs. Tons of telecom startups employed lots of smart people, and developed innovative technologies to provide to these CLECs.
However, there was a fly in the ointment. The ILECs had to provide access to their local lines to the CLECs at reasonable rates, over which the CLECs would provide these new, high-tech services. However, (surprise!) the ILECs would resort to every trick in the book to frustrate, confound and thwart these CLECs.
There were many court battles between these ILECs and CLECs. The CLECs had a chance because the Democrats had the White House. But the moment Bush won, it was all over. All the money men knew that the CLECs had had it, because the Republicans favor those who are already rich, as opposed to those who are trying to get rich.
Venture money to the CLECs dried up, and so too to the startups that were hoping to supply them. It is no coincidence that the economy started crashing as soon as Bush came in.
I watched it last night. It is definitely not as good as T1 or T2, but it is watchable. I liked it. Give it a try, definitely worth the 9 bucks I paid.
Well, since the next generation of GSM is based off CDMA, I think your question is already answered. GSM is 2G technology. CDMA 1xRTT provided twice the number of calls on the same spectrum.
Unfortunately, instead of using the existing, proven, US-based standard (called CDMA2000, 1xRTT, which is also 3G, BTW), the European governments and Wireless vendors got together to form an incompatible European version (called WCDMA, or sometimes just GSM to add to the confusion). They have not been able to get it to work so far, and all the articles that you read about "3G in trouble" are actually referring to this European version. Meanwhile, the American version is doing very well, and some GSM providers, sick and tired of waiting for WCDMA to finally materialize, have decided to go with CDMA2000. It is this migration that the GSM lobby is trying to thwart.
The fact is, GSM is getting its ass kicked so badly by CDMA that they have now resorted to the SCO defense: closing ranks against providers who want to use CDMA, bribing govt. officials, and bringing legal action against CDMA providers. They have used this tactic successfully in Brazil, and it looks like they are trying the same thing in India.
`Persuade' service providers to offer their phones, by dangling money in front of their noses. The cellular providers like Sprint and Verizon are in a brutally competitive market, and every little helps. If MS offers them a hundred million dollars to feature MS phones, you can bet your ass that they will do it. In fact, they have used exactly this tactic to get Sprint to supply MS phones. MS can do this because of their desktop monopoly, and 60% margins. The profit margin of a cell-phone manufacturer is under 5%, and they cannot afford to throw money away like this.
Assume, for a moment, that you are the CEO of Multibillion Dollar Corporation (MDC). Your Software product is entirely "manufactured" in the US. You employ about 5000 programmers/IT workers etc, getting an average of $100,000 per year(including benefits). That is a 500 million dollars per year payroll.
Your main competitor has all the design and the "core" work done in the US, and has the raw implementation done in India, China, Russia or the Philippines. He employs 100 people in the US at $150000 per year, and 7000 people abroad, who make $15000 a year.
Your competitors payroll is only 120 million. His savings in this area are 380 million dollars a year.
Your competitor is able to make his product as fast as you can, faster because he has more quiet, compliant employees who are used to an authoritarian style of management. He suffers no political, legal or economic consequences for his strategy. As far as the US government is concerned, his company is every bit as "God, Mom and Apple pie" as yours, especially if the respective congressment get their cuts.
Your stock is suffering because you cannot show enough profits and expected growth.
What will you do?
If it is any consolation, the IT industry is not the only one being hit. White collar jobs across the board are getting whacked in the US. Insurance calculations have shifted abroad almost completely. Call centers are gone. The lower rungs of the finance industry are shifting abroad. (Why pay a harvard MBA $200000 to analyze company reports when you can get a guy from Banagalore with an MBA from IIM to do this at a tenth of the cost?)
The only reason cars are manufactured in the US is because the goverment has placed stiff tariffs on automobile vendors who don't do x% of their manufacturing in the US.
And that is really the crux of the problem. As long as the US government provides full access to its markets to companies whose labor force is primarily based outside the US, jobs will continue to fly abroad.
What can you do about it? Nothing much. You can try moving up the ladder, or change professions to one that cannot be exported (teaching, nursing, anything with direct customer interaction, working at McDonalds), the military, the US government, blue collar stuff like plumbing etc.
I am currently working for a company that has standardized on Windows 2000 for the desktop. I can tell you that this has significantly cost the company. For a simple reason:
Remote access is impossible.
We have a VPN, but it is unuseable from home. Using VNC remotely from home is too slow an option over anything slower than cable. You can use it to mount disks on your local machine, but you need the full development suite installed on your home PC to get any work done. But most home users do not have Win2000 at home, so the development tools do not install on most developer's home PCs.
The only way to access another machine, even within the company, is via VNC. But the VNC software that they have bought is too slow and crash-prone. Using VNC remotely from home is too slow an option for most users.
If your desktop is too loaded (doing a compile, say), it is impossible to telnet into your absent neighbor's PC and start another compile.
The worst part is, all the tools we use are available for unix. Almost all the developers are familiar with Unix/X. We could have ssh'd to our desktops and got lots of work done from home. Unix/X would have been a natural choice for us. They did not choose it. We are paying for it in terms of missed schedules and lost productivity.
I have been screwed multiple times over rebates. The biggest offender was Visioneer, the maker of parallel port scanners. Couple of years back, they had a really attractive deal (with mail-in rebate) on one of their models. I and multiple friends bought that model at around the same time. All of us sent the rebate coupons in. Not even one got the rebate.
They want you to send them the barcode from the box. Fine. But if they don't acknowledge the receipt, you are screwed. Because you don't have the original anymore! This is a standard trick that they play. "Sorry, sir, we have no record of receipt of anything from you".
To make matters worse, their linux does not support Visioneer scanners. By the time I figured this out, it was too late to return it.
Nokia is probably just trying to derail 1xEV-DO, or at least to slow it down. EVDO has been getting some press and hype lately. Nokia has no stake in EV-DO and will be seriously hurt if it takes off.
The scenario described by you has not existed in the US for at least several years. (Well, all except the number portability).
Right now, most carriers give you about 300 anytime minutes and several thousands of night/weekend minutes as part of their base package, which usually costs about $35.00 a month. This includes the cost of subsidizing the phone. That Motorola phone that your purchased for 19.99 from Verizon probably cost the company $200.00 or more.
This usually includes nationwide roaming, sometimes international roaming. Right now, Verizon gives you seamless US/Canada roaming. Furthermore, most carriers give you several hundred "mobile-to-mobile", anytime minutes and several thousand, mobile-to-mobile night and weekend minutes. I belive other carriers give you comparable deals.
As to number portability, I really have no idea about what is involved here technically. Maybe more knowledgeable people can chime in. But, suffice to say, I and many of my friends have changed services several times over the years and number portability was really never a consideration. Of course, it would be nice to have.
BTW, the carriers have good reason for not giving people "all you can eat" service during the daytime. Unlike wireline, wireless customers use a shared resource. A few bandwidth hogs can make a cell system completely unuseable.
I have been using Mandrake since the 7.x days and am eagerly looking forward to this release. The one thing that I don't like about 9.0 is the fact that they don't use freetype2/xft2 for the rendering. This makes the display quality of the fonts terrible. Anybody know whether they have switched to freetype2/xft2? Their Changelog does not say anything.
The columbian drug lords give millons to catholic charities; not because they care two hoots about catholicism, but merely as a way to cloud the issue in simple minds.
If I robbed a bank and gave half the loot to charity, that does not make the act of theft any less reprehensible.
MS and Bill Gates have no right to the millions that they are giving to charity.
Remember some things the next time you read about one of Gates' charitable donations:
1) The target of his charitable contributions are almost exclusively countries whose governments are considering alternatives to Windows.
2) The dollar value of the contributions might be substantial; but a lot of the actual donation is in *Windows Software*. The actual cost to Bill is just the cost of the CDs. It also helps lock in his monopoly.
3) The donations are tax writeoffs for Bill Gates and Microsoft. The money that ends up in his pocket might be actually more after the donation.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it was Bechtel corporation who did all the work. All the govt. did was pay the bills.
Magnus.
and who invited them here anyway?
Magnus.
That is why tall guys do better with women than short ones, on the average.
Magnus.
Speaking as an ex-Motorolan, I have to agree that this guy is spot-on. I worked there for two years, and this place was as close to Dilbert-land as can be possible in real life. "Steady decline", lifers, guys who have not done a stitch of work for years, baffling political undercurrents etc. I quickly learned that some of the secretaries are mines of information. I befriended a pretty one to whom all the bosses were known to spill the beans to make themselves seem important, and learned of important stuff weeks (sometimes months) before public pronouncements.
During the two years I worked there, I worked on at least 5 different projects that were subsequently canceled. Motorola does not believe in canceling projects efficiently. What happens is that funding for the project dries up, and the politically savvy guys get out. The naive ones (I was one for a while) show up to work and keep working, desperately trying to fix bugs etc while their bosses try to feign interest.
Motorola does not have much longer to run. Samsung and Nokia will kick their asses.
Magnus.
We use lots of Windriver In Circuit Emulators (ICEs) at my current position. Windriver sells 6-inch connector cables for US$150.00. Now these cables are nothing special, just flat straight-through cables (sort of like the PC hard-disc cables), but they have non-standard connectors at the ends.
Anyone know someone who sells these cables for less?
Magnus.
Huh? It seems like it is the Anti-spam service that
got hit here. The spammers won, or am I missing something?
Magnus.
The trick is to get samples, though.
Magnus.
Microsoft's market cap: about 280 Billion $.
Market cap of Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, Nokia combined: = 105 Billion $.
The telecomm industry is hurting, and Microsoft is using every dirty trick in the book to muscle in. They are using their tremendous market cap and huge cash reservers to cajole, bribe, threaten and intimidate the various players. They are doling out large amounts of cash to the service providers (esp 2^nd tier providers like Sprint) to support the Smartphones on the network, and the service provides, who are fighting for their own survival, are in no position to resist.
If they succeed, the Cellphone hardware will be another commodity item with the manufacturers having to subsist on wafer-thin margins, and Microsoft will get $50.00 for every phone sold.
Magnus.
You are being facetious, but if you were in the Telecom industry before 2000, and if you are unemployed now, Bush did really take away your job.
See, what happened was this: there were these companies called "Competitive Local Exchange Carriers" (CLECs) that were the product of the Telecom de-regulation acts. They were supposed to be able to out-compete the entrenched Phone Companies (ILECs) by offering innovative services.
The entire telecom boom of the late 90s arose due to the promise offered by these CLECs. Tons of telecom startups employed lots of smart people, and developed innovative technologies to provide to these CLECs.
However, there was a fly in the ointment. The ILECs had to provide access to their local lines to the CLECs at reasonable rates, over which the CLECs would provide these new, high-tech services. However, (surprise!) the ILECs would resort to every trick in the book to frustrate, confound and thwart these CLECs.
There were many court battles between these ILECs and CLECs. The CLECs had a chance because the Democrats had the White House. But the moment Bush won, it was all over. All the money men knew that the CLECs had had it, because the Republicans favor those who are already rich, as opposed to those who are trying to get rich.
Venture money to the CLECs dried up, and so too to the startups that were hoping to supply them. It is no coincidence that the economy started crashing as soon as Bush came in.
So you see, Bush did take away your job.
Magnus.
Not quite.
You adjust to the new state of life, and tell yourself that the old priorities are obsolete. But you are just fooling yourself.
When the slave begins to like his chains, his domination is complete.
Magnus.
I watched it last night. It is definitely not as good as T1 or T2, but it is watchable. I liked it. Give it a try, definitely worth the 9 bucks I paid.
Magnus.
Well, since the next generation of GSM is based off CDMA, I think your question is already answered. GSM is 2G technology. CDMA 1xRTT provided twice the number of calls on the same spectrum.
Unfortunately, instead of using the existing, proven, US-based standard (called CDMA2000, 1xRTT, which is also 3G, BTW), the European governments and Wireless vendors got together to form an incompatible European version (called WCDMA, or sometimes just GSM to add to the confusion). They have not been able to get it to work so far, and all the articles that you read about "3G in trouble" are actually referring to this European version. Meanwhile, the American version is doing very well, and some GSM providers, sick and tired of waiting for WCDMA to finally materialize, have decided to go with CDMA2000. It is this migration that the GSM lobby is trying to thwart.
Magnus.
The fact is, GSM is getting its ass kicked so badly by CDMA that they have now resorted to the SCO defense: closing ranks against providers who want to use CDMA, bribing govt. officials, and bringing legal action against CDMA providers. They have used this tactic successfully in Brazil, and it looks like they are trying the same thing in India.
Magnus.
`Persuade' service providers to offer their phones, by dangling money in front of their noses. The cellular providers like Sprint and Verizon are in a brutally competitive market, and every little helps. If MS offers them a hundred million dollars to feature MS phones, you can bet your ass that they will do it. In fact, they have used exactly this tactic to get Sprint to supply MS phones. MS can do this because of their desktop monopoly, and 60% margins. The profit margin of a cell-phone manufacturer is under 5%, and they cannot afford to throw money away like this.
Magnus.
Assume, for a moment, that you are the CEO of Multibillion Dollar Corporation (MDC). Your Software product is entirely "manufactured" in the US. You employ about 5000 programmers/IT workers etc, getting an average of $100,000 per year(including benefits). That is a 500 million dollars per year payroll.
Your main competitor has all the design and the "core" work done in the US, and has the raw implementation done in India, China, Russia or the Philippines. He employs 100 people in the US at $150000 per year, and 7000 people abroad, who make $15000 a year.
Your competitors payroll is only 120 million. His savings in this area are 380 million dollars a year.
Your competitor is able to make his product as fast as you can, faster because he has more quiet, compliant employees who are used to an authoritarian style of management. He suffers no political, legal or economic consequences for his strategy. As far as the US government is concerned, his company is every bit as "God, Mom and Apple pie" as yours, especially if the respective congressment get their cuts.
Your stock is suffering because you cannot show enough profits and expected growth.
What will you do?
If it is any consolation, the IT industry is not the only one being hit. White collar jobs across the board are getting whacked in the US. Insurance calculations have shifted abroad almost completely. Call centers are gone. The lower rungs of the finance industry are shifting abroad. (Why pay a harvard MBA $200000 to analyze company reports when you can get a guy from Banagalore with an MBA from IIM to do this at a tenth of the cost?)
The only reason cars are manufactured in the US is because the goverment has placed stiff tariffs on automobile vendors who don't do x% of their manufacturing in the US.
And that is really the crux of the problem. As long as the US government provides full access to its markets to companies whose labor force is primarily based outside the US, jobs will continue to fly abroad.
What can you do about it? Nothing much. You can try moving up the ladder, or change professions to one that cannot be exported (teaching, nursing, anything with direct customer interaction, working at McDonalds), the military, the US government, blue collar stuff like plumbing etc.
Magnus.
I am currently working for a company that has standardized on Windows 2000 for the desktop. I can tell you that this has significantly cost the company. For a simple reason:
Remote access is impossible.
We have a VPN, but it is unuseable from home. Using VNC remotely from home is too slow an option over anything slower than cable. You can use it to mount disks on your local machine, but you need the full development suite installed on your home PC to get any work done. But most home users do not have Win2000 at home, so the development tools do not install on most developer's home PCs.
The only way to access another machine, even within the company, is via VNC. But the VNC software that they have bought is too slow and crash-prone. Using VNC remotely from home is too slow an option for most users.
If your desktop is too loaded (doing a compile, say), it is impossible to telnet into your absent neighbor's PC and start another compile.
The worst part is, all the tools we use are available for unix. Almost all the developers are familiar with Unix/X. We could have ssh'd to our desktops and got lots of work done from home. Unix/X would have been a natural choice for us. They did not choose it. We are paying for it in terms of missed schedules and lost productivity.
Magnus.
Come on Slashdot, you can do better than this.
How is Siva Vaidyanathan any more difficult than Norman Schwarzkopf, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Condaleeza Rice?
I expect disparaging condescension from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Not here.
Magnus.
The mafia don't resort to the courts either. They don't have to.
Magnus.
I have been screwed multiple times over rebates.
The biggest offender was Visioneer, the maker of
parallel port scanners. Couple of years back,
they had a really attractive deal (with mail-in rebate)
on one of their models. I and multiple friends
bought that model at around the same time.
All of us sent the rebate coupons in. Not even one
got the rebate.
They want you to send them the barcode from
the box. Fine. But if they don't acknowledge the
receipt, you are screwed. Because you don't have
the original anymore! This is a standard trick
that they play. "Sorry, sir, we have no record of
receipt of anything from you".
To make matters worse, their linux does not support
Visioneer scanners. By the time I figured this out, it was too
late to return it.
Magnus.
Disclaimer: I work in the CDMA industry. Not that I am biased or anything. :)
But my advice holds. Comparing CDMA to GSM is like comparing Linux and Windows. The only advantage of GSM is the installed base.
Magnus.
Nokia is probably just trying to derail 1xEV-DO, or at least to slow it down.
EVDO has been getting some press and hype lately. Nokia has no stake in EV-DO and will be seriously hurt if it takes off.
Magnus.
Where does your friend live? In Washingon or San Diego? If so, you are probably talking about 1xEV-DO being trialed by Verizon.
Magnus.
The scenario described by you has not existed in the US for at least several years. (Well, all except the number portability).
Right now, most carriers give you about 300 anytime minutes and several thousands of night/weekend minutes as part of their base package, which usually costs about $35.00 a month. This includes the cost of subsidizing the phone. That Motorola phone that your purchased for 19.99 from Verizon probably cost the company $200.00 or more.
This usually includes nationwide roaming, sometimes international roaming. Right now, Verizon gives you seamless US/Canada roaming. Furthermore, most carriers give you several hundred "mobile-to-mobile", anytime minutes and several thousand, mobile-to-mobile night and weekend minutes. I belive other carriers give you comparable deals.
As to number portability, I really have no idea about what is involved here technically. Maybe more knowledgeable people can chime in. But, suffice to say, I and many of my friends have changed services several times over the years and number portability was really never a consideration. Of course, it would be nice to have.
BTW, the carriers have good reason for not giving people "all you can eat" service during the daytime. Unlike wireline, wireless customers use a shared resource. A few bandwidth hogs can make a cell system completely unuseable.
Magnus.
I have been using Mandrake since the 7.x days and am eagerly looking forward to this release. The one thing that I don't like about 9.0 is the fact that they don't use freetype2/xft2 for the rendering. This makes the display quality of the fonts terrible. Anybody know whether they have switched to freetype2/xft2? Their Changelog does not say anything.
Magnus.
The columbian drug lords give millons to catholic charities; not because they care two hoots about catholicism, but merely as a way to cloud the issue in simple minds.
If I robbed a bank and gave half the loot to charity, that does not make the act of theft any less reprehensible.
MS and Bill Gates have no right to the millions that they are giving to charity.
Remember some things the next time you read about one of Gates' charitable donations:
1) The target of his charitable contributions are almost exclusively countries whose governments are considering alternatives to Windows.
2) The dollar value of the contributions might be substantial; but a lot of the actual donation is in *Windows Software*. The actual cost to Bill is just the cost of the CDs. It also helps lock in his monopoly.
3) The donations are tax writeoffs for Bill Gates and Microsoft. The money that ends up in his pocket might be actually more after the donation.
Magnus.