"Trainees typically watch dozens of American movies and TV shows for the first week to acclimatize themselves to U.S. slang and accents."
As employees gain exposure to the US' consumption-based society, this could ultimately work against the employers who count on keeping the salaries low. Heh, following that reasoning, all we have to do to start bringing the jobs back is open a Macy's or Niemann Marcus in Bangalore...
$179 is quite high for this sort of thing. But it's got a loyal following from the early Mac days that will pay (or at least talk their bosses into paying). I wonder how many people would shell out the cash if it came out of their own pocket? I'm sure there are some who do, but not me. In this vein, it's a lot like IntelliJ or SlickEdit.
When the freeware 6.1 version for OSX started getting crashy, I switched to JEdit. Ant and CVS integration, autocompletion, code refactoring, you-name-it plugins. It's cross platform and open source!
Nobody believes me, but I SWEAR I read an article in a special section of the Detroit Free Press just before Episode V came out that said there would indeed be NINE EPISODES. The article said they would be group into a "trilogy of trilogies". The article also said he was going to do them in the order 4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3. When Episode I was announced, I just assumed Lucas scaled back his ambitions for Star Wars. I knew I should have saved that section. Anyone work at the Detroit Free Press?
I did some research on this (googled "shareware FAQ") before getting into it, and the truth is, people will pay if properly encouraged.
How to encourage?
1. Write something useful. Nobody needs another word processor or hex editor or email client -- even if you come up with an innovative new feature for such products, it's better to write a plugin for something that exists. People will sacrifice features for price any day (case in point: Outlook Express). A good way to write something useful is to write something that you yourself need.
2. Provide limited demos of the software. Don't let people have full use of your software for free -- they won't pay. This means putting some thought into how the software will be limited along axes of Time and Functionality. Depending on the nature of your software (single use vs. continual use), you'll have to strike an appropriate balance.
3. Protect your software. Obfuscate if necessary and never put fully functional software out in the public. Require registration codes that you can tie back to an individual, but don't kill yourself making your software crack-proof. If someone's hell-bent on cracking your registration keys, they'll do it. Just watch the Internet appropriately and change your software when necessary. Also, if you make obtaining and maintaining a working copy of your software a complicated process, you'll lose more sales than you are protecting.
4. Develop a corporate/educational licensing model. Most businesses have their own software police to make sure that adequate licenses are purchased. They are quite honest, but they want the policing job to be as simple as possible. Offer site licensing and volume discounts. Educational institutions will *always* ask for an educational discount, so make one up that'll make them feel good. Remember, any sale is money in your pocket.
5. Present yourself professionally. Make customers believe you are a real company (you are, but we're talking degrees of "real"). Keep your website and software documentation explicitly professional. Mimic your favorite commercial software company's page, if necessary. Have a registered company name and a.com domain name. Never admit or imply that you're a one-man company -- use of the "royal we" can help here until you have bona fide partners.
6. Finally, keep the price realistic. Unless you're Microsoft, most consumers get a headache over $25 unless you have something truly great on your hands. Software shouldn't cost more than 2 or 3% of what the machine cost to run it! Also, be creative with your licensing to play on the honesty of those customers who are. Apple's "household" license was truly a fantasic idea in this respect.
7. Offer unlimited upgrades a la "once a customer always a customer". If you modify your product to such a degree that you want more money from existing customers, you should have created a new product instead. Consider evolving a product "suite". This requires some level of product lifecycle planning, but it's worth it.
There's more tips out there on how to get started, so just look around for them.
True, you'll never experience the joy of being a dot-com paper millionaire. And, with most raw programming work being sent to India, Russia, and other developing (and exploitable) economies, you will likely work for less than those who came before you. However, consulting or contract work isn't such a bad alternative to a pure software house. In fact, I think it's better since you get a wider exposure to the entire software lifecycle.
Another avenue to explore is "shareware". No, seriously. If you come up with a truly useful product (i.e. not a screensaver), even a niche product will do well. I know this goes against the free and open source movements, but I see nothing wrong with it as a source of individual primary or additional income. In fact, I wish I would have bit the bullet and started out by selling my own software -- which is already pulling in about what my first "real" job paid. But now I'm spoiled and to afraid to leave the protective blanket of "working for the man" (benefits, pension, company car, etc.).
Actually, the Canadian border guards were quite pleasant; we had nothing to hide and cooperated fully. The guards were indeed armed, and we were told exactly where to stand at all times. However, the youngest in our group being 31, we were not the typical band of youngsters crossing the border for a night of "ballet". They did seem to be quite interested in my Filipino friend, since he flew from San Franciso to Detroit before driving across into Canada.
Back in July 2002, a group of us crossed into Canada at the Blue Waters Bridge in Port Huron/Sarnia for a bachelor's party trip to Toronto. We were pulled over and thoroughly questioned and searched (vehicle, clothes, etc.) on the Canadian side after crossing. However, on the way back in to the US, we were waved on through.
Well, brave AC, if you had read and understood the post, you'd know that since we use Wipro for design and development it is they who are creating the poor specs that their own developers can't even follow. What's more, you have no idea what you are talking about, since Wipro's model is to have local folks that create the specs that get sent to their own developers offshore.
I should add that we've never had an in-house design and development staff and that we've never seen such poor quality before. Nor have we had such a difficult time getting acceptable "specs" from a vendor before. I'll pick Deloitte, IBM, or any of the smaller boutique firms any day over this "offshore-by-proxy" arrangement.
I've been immersed in Wiproans for the past several months, and instead of my job (as lead architect) becoming easier, it's become harder. We have to keep constant watch for the shortcuts they take, we spend hours upon hours helping them get their designs and their documentation to an acceptable level -- and even then we have to tell them to re-do things three or four times before they actually make any changes.
Onsite work is bad enough, but the offshore work often ends up being immediately and completely "refactored" onsite by local talent. Oddly enough, it seems the time we spend scrambling to make things work added to the time and cost of having Wipro blunder through the first time still seems to be less than if local talent handled the entire project from the start.
And it's not an "Indian thing", either. Most Indians I've worked with in my career have been very thoroughly educated, knowledgeable, and detail-oriented people -- and a hell of a lot friendlier than your average American Cowboy Coder. I just find it interesting that my company is unwilling to hire anyone with less than 8 years IT industry experience, but we'll take a Wipro contractor straight out the chute of some unknown third-world university where the students riot if they're not allowed to cheat on exams.
Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's funny.
This may be offtopic and a bit ignorant on my part, but why is it that a DirecTV dish needs to be somewhat precisely aimed at a satellite, but an XM antenna merely needs a line of sight to the southern sky? Is there a significant difference in the way these satellites are broadcasting?
Also, before you write off XM, is DirecTV planning on deploying ground-based "terrestrial repeaters" as XM has?
I doubt even the Postmaster General has seen the "balance sheets". Snailmail spam will remain a cyclical argument until someone actually takes the time to analyze how much it costs to deliver it. Sure, the mailers pay the post office some amount, but has the post office really analyzed the cost of receiving that money? Do they really know how much it costs in time and resources to deliver that wad of advertisements that's as thick as a Sunday newspaper? I highly doubt it. Really, if junk mailers are subsidizing the cost of sending our mail, why does the cost of stamps keep increasing? Surely, I get enough junk mail that all my real mail should be free!
My mailbox is jam-packed every day, and usually only a few items a week are items I care to open. Most gets dumped in the trash immediately. But what frosts me more is that 90% of the junk mail isn't even addressed to me! It's all addressed to previous occupants of my house going back at least 15 years. This is what leads me to doubt the post office's financial arguments for junk mail. If my situation is typical, they could eliminate half their staff and equipment costs if they just updated their damn databases!
Think in terms of how much mail a delivery person can carry in those bags in one trip from the truck as they trudge through the neighborhood. One person could cover several blocks in one trip if it weren't for countless coupon books and grocery store newspapers.
Then, there's those goddamn free community newspapers twice a week that some unseen delivery jerk drops on my porch or in my driveway (never the same place twice). These things piss me off more than the junk mail. I can't even tell them that I choose not to receive their worthless local yokel rags. They say, "We don't maintain lists of who's a subscriber and who's not because our paper is completely free!" Imagine AOL disks scattered across your yard and driveway twice a week. Deleting something from your inbox is infinitely less frustrating than picking soggy, rain-soaked newspaper bits out of your shrubs. I swear one day I'm reporting them for littering.
Finally, did you know that your postman (or postwoman) is required to walk across your lawn unless you specifically call to complain about it? It's true.
If that's the case, they should return them. Will it ever be possible ignore the constant barrage of subliminal ("sublimnibable"?) and liminal commands to PURCHASE, CONSUME, and WASTE and implement an effective boycott of all things DRM? I mean, we're talking CD's here, not FOOD! Votes, letters, and faxes won't do diddly. This is America folks: money is god. Remember, their money is yours first. Don't give it to them without a fight!
Am I the only one who read the article? The bill was signed by Clinton, not Bush -- not that it even matters. However, the Bush administration argument for the filters seems to be more of an argument against them.
"The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers."
The key phrases here are not required and shouldn't have to. Following this logic, libraries are not required to not have pornographic magazines and therefore shouldn't have to deny access to pornography on their computers.
Why legislate when communities and libraries are perfectly capable of handling this without violating the First Amendment on their own? How? Here's a few suggestions:
don't do anything
tell parents to keep their kids in the kiddie section if they're worried about it
Move the computers to the far corner, out of sight (this will handle the goatse prankers)
have a separate bank of computers with kiddie filters for those who choose to use them
"We must protect the children!" Please. I'm tired of your children and your inability and unwillingness to watch them determining how I can lead my life.
It all depends on how you define east and west. For example, east can be defined as 90 degrees clock-wise from north, OR the direction of the earth's rotation.
This isn't a joke, really. Remember the TV exec who said that people who skip commercials are stealing television shows? I wonder if someday someone will effectively argue in the courts that by using a spamblocker, you are "stealing" the Internet. I know, and you know, that this doesn't make sense, but, well, look at DMCA, UCITA,...
They can pass all the laws they want, but who's going to enforce them? It's illegal to send unsolicited faxes too, but my eFax number gets swamped by them daily.
It's true. I also am a developer of cross-platform software who has submitted to Tucow's review process. The interesting thing was that they had a different reviewer for each OS my software runs on, and each reviewer gave drastically different reviews. If I can find the results I'll post them.
Anyways, the feeling that I got from the Windows reviewers is that they are incredibly biased against anything cross platform and especially programs written in Java. This isn't just sour grapes either. They penalized me for all sorts of contrived shortcomings (including "it's not built with Visual Studio") and then topped it off with the comment "people won't need this software".
I've since decided to forget about Tucows listings. A while ago they threatend to delist me 'cause I didn't update my listing after a new release. I ignored them and now, interestingly enough, they've been updating my listings for me.
Wide Open West, a cable provider making its rounds currently in the Midwest (Detroit, Chicago, etc.) has been offering tiered cable broadband pricing for a while now.
Digital does not imply cable or satellite service. In fact, my local PBS station broadcasts digital signals over the air. You just need the right antenna tacked on to your house -- like in the old days.
Slashdot Mirror
"Trainees typically watch dozens of American movies and TV shows for the first week to acclimatize themselves to U.S. slang and accents."
As employees gain exposure to the US' consumption-based society, this could ultimately work against the employers who count on keeping the salaries low. Heh, following that reasoning, all we have to do to start bringing the jobs back is open a Macy's or Niemann Marcus in Bangalore...
$179 is quite high for this sort of thing. But it's got a loyal following from the early Mac days that will pay (or at least talk their bosses into paying). I wonder how many people would shell out the cash if it came out of their own pocket? I'm sure there are some who do, but not me. In this vein, it's a lot like IntelliJ or SlickEdit.
When the freeware 6.1 version for OSX started getting crashy, I switched to JEdit. Ant and CVS integration, autocompletion, code refactoring, you-name-it plugins. It's cross platform and open source!
Wow. There must be some significant high altitude prevailing winds in Kentucky to take such things so completely way over your head.
Somebody else explain the joke to him. I'm going to throw up now.
But, depending on your wife, the sucking feature could even out the balance.
Nobody believes me, but I SWEAR I read an article in a special section of the Detroit Free Press just before Episode V came out that said there would indeed be NINE EPISODES. The article said they would be group into a "trilogy of trilogies". The article also said he was going to do them in the order 4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3. When Episode I was announced, I just assumed Lucas scaled back his ambitions for Star Wars. I knew I should have saved that section. Anyone work at the Detroit Free Press?
Ask and ye shall receive. Actually, I'm surprised nobody's sent this to the spammers already.
I did some research on this (googled "shareware FAQ") before getting into it, and the truth is, people will pay if properly encouraged.
.com domain name. Never admit or imply that you're a one-man company -- use of the "royal we" can help here until you have bona fide partners.
How to encourage?
1. Write something useful. Nobody needs another word processor or hex editor or email client -- even if you come up with an innovative new feature for such products, it's better to write a plugin for something that exists. People will sacrifice features for price any day (case in point: Outlook Express). A good way to write something useful is to write something that you yourself need.
2. Provide limited demos of the software. Don't let people have full use of your software for free -- they won't pay. This means putting some thought into how the software will be limited along axes of Time and Functionality. Depending on the nature of your software (single use vs. continual use), you'll have to strike an appropriate balance.
3. Protect your software. Obfuscate if necessary and never put fully functional software out in the public. Require registration codes that you can tie back to an individual, but don't kill yourself making your software crack-proof. If someone's hell-bent on cracking your registration keys, they'll do it. Just watch the Internet appropriately and change your software when necessary. Also, if you make obtaining and maintaining a working copy of your software a complicated process, you'll lose more sales than you are protecting.
4. Develop a corporate/educational licensing model. Most businesses have their own software police to make sure that adequate licenses are purchased. They are quite honest, but they want the policing job to be as simple as possible. Offer site licensing and volume discounts. Educational institutions will *always* ask for an educational discount, so make one up that'll make them feel good. Remember, any sale is money in your pocket.
5. Present yourself professionally. Make customers believe you are a real company (you are, but we're talking degrees of "real"). Keep your website and software documentation explicitly professional. Mimic your favorite commercial software company's page, if necessary. Have a registered company name and a
6. Finally, keep the price realistic. Unless you're Microsoft, most consumers get a headache over $25 unless you have something truly great on your hands. Software shouldn't cost more than 2 or 3% of what the machine cost to run it! Also, be creative with your licensing to play on the honesty of those customers who are. Apple's "household" license was truly a fantasic idea in this respect.
7. Offer unlimited upgrades a la "once a customer always a customer". If you modify your product to such a degree that you want more money from existing customers, you should have created a new product instead. Consider evolving a product "suite". This requires some level of product lifecycle planning, but it's worth it.
There's more tips out there on how to get started, so just look around for them.
True, you'll never experience the joy of being a dot-com paper millionaire. And, with most raw programming work being sent to India, Russia, and other developing (and exploitable) economies, you will likely work for less than those who came before you. However, consulting or contract work isn't such a bad alternative to a pure software house. In fact, I think it's better since you get a wider exposure to the entire software lifecycle.
Another avenue to explore is "shareware". No, seriously. If you come up with a truly useful product (i.e. not a screensaver), even a niche product will do well. I know this goes against the free and open source movements, but I see nothing wrong with it as a source of individual primary or additional income. In fact, I wish I would have bit the bullet and started out by selling my own software -- which is already pulling in about what my first "real" job paid. But now I'm spoiled and to afraid to leave the protective blanket of "working for the man" (benefits, pension, company car, etc.).
Actually, the Canadian border guards were quite pleasant; we had nothing to hide and cooperated fully. The guards were indeed armed, and we were told exactly where to stand at all times. However, the youngest in our group being 31, we were not the typical band of youngsters crossing the border for a night of "ballet". They did seem to be quite interested in my Filipino friend, since he flew from San Franciso to Detroit before driving across into Canada.
Back in July 2002, a group of us crossed into Canada at the Blue Waters Bridge in Port Huron/Sarnia for a bachelor's party trip to Toronto. We were pulled over and thoroughly questioned and searched (vehicle, clothes, etc.) on the Canadian side after crossing. However, on the way back in to the US, we were waved on through.
Dolomite!
Well, brave AC, if you had read and understood the post, you'd know that since we use Wipro for design and development it is they who are creating the poor specs that their own developers can't even follow. What's more, you have no idea what you are talking about, since Wipro's model is to have local folks that create the specs that get sent to their own developers offshore.
I should add that we've never had an in-house design and development staff and that we've never seen such poor quality before. Nor have we had such a difficult time getting acceptable "specs" from a vendor before. I'll pick Deloitte, IBM, or any of the smaller boutique firms any day over this "offshore-by-proxy" arrangement.
I've been immersed in Wiproans for the past several months, and instead of my job (as lead architect) becoming easier, it's become harder. We have to keep constant watch for the shortcuts they take, we spend hours upon hours helping them get their designs and their documentation to an acceptable level -- and even then we have to tell them to re-do things three or four times before they actually make any changes.
Onsite work is bad enough, but the offshore work often ends up being immediately and completely "refactored" onsite by local talent. Oddly enough, it seems the time we spend scrambling to make things work added to the time and cost of having Wipro blunder through the first time still seems to be less than if local talent handled the entire project from the start.
And it's not an "Indian thing", either. Most Indians I've worked with in my career have been very thoroughly educated, knowledgeable, and detail-oriented people -- and a hell of a lot friendlier than your average American Cowboy Coder. I just find it interesting that my company is unwilling to hire anyone with less than 8 years IT industry experience, but we'll take a Wipro contractor straight out the chute of some unknown third-world university where the students riot if they're not allowed to cheat on exams.
Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's funny.
Also, before you write off XM, is DirecTV planning on deploying ground-based "terrestrial repeaters" as XM has?
I doubt even the Postmaster General has seen the "balance sheets". Snailmail spam will remain a cyclical argument until someone actually takes the time to analyze how much it costs to deliver it. Sure, the mailers pay the post office some amount, but has the post office really analyzed the cost of receiving that money? Do they really know how much it costs in time and resources to deliver that wad of advertisements that's as thick as a Sunday newspaper? I highly doubt it. Really, if junk mailers are subsidizing the cost of sending our mail, why does the cost of stamps keep increasing? Surely, I get enough junk mail that all my real mail should be free!
My mailbox is jam-packed every day, and usually only a few items a week are items I care to open. Most gets dumped in the trash immediately. But what frosts me more is that 90% of the junk mail isn't even addressed to me! It's all addressed to previous occupants of my house going back at least 15 years. This is what leads me to doubt the post office's financial arguments for junk mail. If my situation is typical, they could eliminate half their staff and equipment costs if they just updated their damn databases!
Think in terms of how much mail a delivery person can carry in those bags in one trip from the truck as they trudge through the neighborhood. One person could cover several blocks in one trip if it weren't for countless coupon books and grocery store newspapers.
Then, there's those goddamn free community newspapers twice a week that some unseen delivery jerk drops on my porch or in my driveway (never the same place twice). These things piss me off more than the junk mail. I can't even tell them that I choose not to receive their worthless local yokel rags. They say, "We don't maintain lists of who's a subscriber and who's not because our paper is completely free!" Imagine AOL disks scattered across your yard and driveway twice a week. Deleting something from your inbox is infinitely less frustrating than picking soggy, rain-soaked newspaper bits out of your shrubs. I swear one day I'm reporting them for littering.
Finally, did you know that your postman (or postwoman) is required to walk across your lawn unless you specifically call to complain about it? It's true.
If that's the case, they should return them. Will it ever be possible ignore the constant barrage of subliminal ("sublimnibable"?) and liminal commands to PURCHASE, CONSUME, and WASTE and implement an effective boycott of all things DRM? I mean, we're talking CD's here, not FOOD! Votes, letters, and faxes won't do diddly. This is America folks: money is god. Remember, their money is yours first. Don't give it to them without a fight!
"The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers."
The key phrases here are not required and shouldn't have to. Following this logic, libraries are not required to not have pornographic magazines and therefore shouldn't have to deny access to pornography on their computers.
Why legislate when communities and libraries are perfectly capable of handling this without violating the First Amendment on their own? How? Here's a few suggestions:
"We must protect the children!" Please. I'm tired of your children and your inability and unwillingness to watch them determining how I can lead my life.
It all depends on how you define east and west. For example, east can be defined as 90 degrees clock-wise from north, OR the direction of the earth's rotation.
Many people have had success converting pst files (and many other proprietary formats) to standard formats using Emailchemy and a procedure described in the user docs.
(I hate to perpetuate UCP's on slashdot, so mod me down if necessary, but I thought this would be helpful to the discussion.)
Well, we really only need three laws that can be applied to any situation or environment:
(If I may paraphrase Asimov...)
1) A human being may not injure a human being.
2) A human being must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First Law.
3) Stay the fuck out of my yard.
This isn't a joke, really. Remember the TV exec who said that people who skip commercials are stealing television shows? I wonder if someday someone will effectively argue in the courts that by using a spamblocker, you are "stealing" the Internet. I know, and you know, that this doesn't make sense, but, well, look at DMCA, UCITA, ...
They can pass all the laws they want, but who's going to enforce them? It's illegal to send unsolicited faxes too, but my eFax number gets swamped by them daily.
Anyways, the feeling that I got from the Windows reviewers is that they are incredibly biased against anything cross platform and especially programs written in Java. This isn't just sour grapes either. They penalized me for all sorts of contrived shortcomings (including "it's not built with Visual Studio") and then topped it off with the comment "people won't need this software".
I've since decided to forget about Tucows listings. A while ago they threatend to delist me 'cause I didn't update my listing after a new release. I ignored them and now, interestingly enough, they've been updating my listings for me.
And sales are just fine, thank you.
Wide Open West, a cable provider making its rounds currently in the Midwest (Detroit, Chicago, etc.) has been offering tiered cable broadband pricing for a while now.
Digital does not imply cable or satellite service. In fact, my local PBS station broadcasts digital signals over the air. You just need the right antenna tacked on to your house -- like in the old days.