I've dealt with a few Indian firms, for outsourced tech support staff and for programmers. For the most part, these guys are incompetent. I think the main reason offshoring there is so popular is due to their English skills. However, with increasing demand, and therefore prices, it has now become unfeasible to outsource there, at least for me. I see many firms trying to charge $25/hour for sub-par programming. Why do that when I can pay a little more and get a real local programmer whom I can watch and supervise?
The goal of outsourcing is to either save money, or to get better expertise. I feel neither is true now, so India is no longer an attractive option.
In fact, I see Russians (and other Eastern Europeans) as being better programmers overall. I've checked out a few, and they seem to know what they're doing, unlike the Indians.
And just to let you know, Indian English skills aren't that great either. I've tried many outsourced tech support. They've all sucked. All of them.
Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, you are part of the problem, regardless of how you're trying to justify it. If you feel this practice is immoral, you should quit right away. In fact, part of your salary comes from these coerced cancellation cancellations (if there's such a phrase).
Most stats software out there agree basically with what is measured and what variables to use. To vary in the amount you are talking about, it'd require huge deviations in measuring variables. Again, this comes down to variables, not what is commonly accepted ways of measuring (which the article was referring to).
Using different variable values, inaccuracies can arise from any system, even with what the article was proposing as ways to measure traffic more accurately.
What I'm saying is, considering measuring systems (which is mostly true in the market place now) and measured variable values are equivalent, the end result, while still inaccurate, will be comparatively accurate between two sites.
While web usage stats may indeed be inaccurate, it is so across the board. This means, everything that relies on it has the same amount of inaccuracy... Which in turn makes it, accurate in the market place.
For instance, considering everything else to be equal, an ad buyer wanting to pay $1 for one thousand unique eyeballs won't care whether it's spent at site A or site B, as long as they are using equivalent methods to measure traffic.
Another example. Say Google puts out a press release saying they have X% of web traffic. MSN comes out with Y%. Sure they both may be off, but still the ratio of the two will still be about the same.
It's like playing chess without the Bishop, except it doesn't just apply to one player, but to every player. There's no advantage for anybody and the net result is probably the same.
You think this will actually happen? First of all, Windows practically has a monopoly. Mac is only a small dent. If anything I think MS is purposely letting Mac survive at a level that's not enough to overcome the Windows monopoly, yes large enoough to not attract the DOJ's wrath again. So, it's actually not a duopoly.
Second, the OS market is a natural monopoly. The most users that use it, the more software support it gets, and the less developers will want to support the competing OSes. This leads to less users for the competing OS, etc etc.
Tell me, as a developer, would you want or care to support your product on a bunch of non-compatible OSes? This drives up your efforts, costs, and headaches. And as an end user, do you really want to deal with other people's computers that are runnning something different from yours?
Really, it will never work. People keep saying they want choices. It's only talk. When there's an abundance of choice the average consumer gets confused and pissed. It always ends up being just a few key players. And in the case of desktop OSes, it always goes to just one.
All these new domain suffixes are getting pointless. Does anyone actually think it's going to work? The only people who will benefit are the domain name registrars. That's about it.
You're forgetting, most collocation data centers charge you by the 95th percentile. With most of the traffic bunched up duing the weekday hours (most likely), the guy is probably paying for many more Mbps than what you're calculating.
By asking them to publish their books for free, so that Google can make money off of advertising on someone else's back... that already is voting with your wallet. They've just been deprived of much of their earnings.
Writing to these publishers won't do any good. You're not giving them any better alternatives.
The real problem here isn't the people. It's the system. When you have a court system that routinely allow HUGE multi-million dollar judgments on frivolous lawsuits, you end up encouringing merit-less lawsuits. This results companies slapping on these labels etc etc.
Next time someone's kid goes and shoots up a bunch of people, and the parents sue the makers of {name your video game}, the courts should kick the parents to the curb and fine their asses.
First, 99.9999% of kids that play them don't go out committing crimes, so why should everybody suffer because of a couple of Darwinian rejects? This is how you want society to be shaped? By a couple of bad apples?
Second, why is it the government's job to babysit your kids? The government is treading on waters it should not have the power to tread on. Big government equals bad government. Communism is just around the corner...
This IS evil by Google. You guys can justify their behavior however you'd like, but I can't.
The information presented is right in Google's own search engine, via simple searches! It's not like the reporter had to dig deep dark corners to find it.
But more importantly, to ban a whole organization based on one article that's not even that offensive? Do you really want to support this idea of big business, aka. Google, bullying little guys when something they don't like a message?
Look at the stock industry. It's rife with similar evil tactics. X corp. doesn't like Z analyst's criticism of their company. X corp. bans Z's parent company from future access to stocks, insider info, etc. Z's parent company withdraws Z's criticism. Pretty soon all you see are buy buy buy articles with lots of fluff and lies for investors. And this happens routinely.
First of all, prove your point regarding people becoming poorer after Walmart moves in.
Second, you are basically advocating fatter profits for businesses, because Walmart competes and steals customers because they are much cheaper. Customers benefit greatly as a result. This is why people flock there. You didn't think people just go to Walmart because they like cramming with all those annoying crowds did you?
So, you are for businesses. People who support Walmart are for cheaper prices, hence consumers. Who's evil?
I've been using Linux for the longest time, but after countless times where I've had to downgrade to a lower version (Fedora/RedHat) due to incompatible/non-existent SCSI driver support I'm in doubt as to whether Linux really is ready for an enterprise environment.
Does it not strike one as ridiculous when an older kernel, and thus Linux distribution, actually provides support for many SCSI adapters while newer ones just don't?
Here's what I had to do with my latest install. I was trying to install Fedora 3 on a server with a LSI Logic SCSI card (built-in to the motherboard). The damn thing wouldn't see the SCSI adaptor, and thus the drives. No driver updates could be found anywhere. I searched everywhere.
So I tried Fedora 2. No go. Then RedHat 9. Voila! Now it works. Now isn't that charming...
Could someone help clarify as to how this system calculates who you are similar to in terms of voting pattern? Suppose I'm a user that has downloaded A, B, and C. Does this mean the system would have to take someone who has also downloaded A, B, and C, and have voted the same way as me to give me an idea if file D is likely to be good?
With so many files, there would be a very small number of peoople that would have downloaded the same files as I have.
That's a rhetorical question we all know the answer to. If (and that's a big IF) this dude bothers replying to this question, you know he will be putting on the Microsoft spin, not admitting to it, and at the same time making it seem like MS won't make it less interoperable in the future.
Bull. Once this is out you think developers won't be going to the left and right click routine that Windows users have been used to for many years? If that's the case, WHY bother even coming up with this mouse?
If I can help it, I would never use VOIP service from one of the greedy telcos. For the longest time these guys have been dicking us around, nickle and diming us to death with their stupid surcharges, fees, long distance rates, etc.
I distinctly remember a few years ago I made a call to Asia using AT&T as the long distance provider. It ended up being almost $3 per minute, no joke! In order to take advantage of their "lower" (which is still way way higher than VOIP service) rates, I'd have to pay some stupid monthly fee and join some plan.
Now that VOIP is here, these guys are finally offering it to compete. I say screw them. They've done the same to us for decades, tried and is still trying to put up roadblocks to VOIP. I would not trust these bast(a)rds ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
I've dealt with a few Indian firms, for outsourced tech support staff and for programmers. For the most part, these guys are incompetent. I think the main reason offshoring there is so popular is due to their English skills. However, with increasing demand, and therefore prices, it has now become unfeasible to outsource there, at least for me. I see many firms trying to charge $25/hour for sub-par programming. Why do that when I can pay a little more and get a real local programmer whom I can watch and supervise?
The goal of outsourcing is to either save money, or to get better expertise. I feel neither is true now, so India is no longer an attractive option.
In fact, I see Russians (and other Eastern Europeans) as being better programmers overall. I've checked out a few, and they seem to know what they're doing, unlike the Indians.
And just to let you know, Indian English skills aren't that great either. I've tried many outsourced tech support. They've all sucked. All of them.
Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, you are part of the problem, regardless of how you're trying to justify it. If you feel this practice is immoral, you should quit right away. In fact, part of your salary comes from these coerced cancellation cancellations (if there's such a phrase).
er, no.
Most stats software out there agree basically with what is measured and what variables to use. To vary in the amount you are talking about, it'd require huge deviations in measuring variables. Again, this comes down to variables, not what is commonly accepted ways of measuring (which the article was referring to).
Using different variable values, inaccuracies can arise from any system, even with what the article was proposing as ways to measure traffic more accurately.
What I'm saying is, considering measuring systems (which is mostly true in the market place now) and measured variable values are equivalent, the end result, while still inaccurate, will be comparatively accurate between two sites.
While web usage stats may indeed be inaccurate, it is so across the board. This means, everything that relies on it has the same amount of inaccuracy... Which in turn makes it, accurate in the market place.
For instance, considering everything else to be equal, an ad buyer wanting to pay $1 for one thousand unique eyeballs won't care whether it's spent at site A or site B, as long as they are using equivalent methods to measure traffic.
Another example. Say Google puts out a press release saying they have X% of web traffic. MSN comes out with Y%. Sure they both may be off, but still the ratio of the two will still be about the same.
It's like playing chess without the Bishop, except it doesn't just apply to one player, but to every player. There's no advantage for anybody and the net result is probably the same.
You think this will actually happen? First of all, Windows practically has a monopoly. Mac is only a small dent. If anything I think MS is purposely letting Mac survive at a level that's not enough to overcome the Windows monopoly, yes large enoough to not attract the DOJ's wrath again. So, it's actually not a duopoly.
Second, the OS market is a natural monopoly. The most users that use it, the more software support it gets, and the less developers will want to support the competing OSes. This leads to less users for the competing OS, etc etc.
Tell me, as a developer, would you want or care to support your product on a bunch of non-compatible OSes? This drives up your efforts, costs, and headaches. And as an end user, do you really want to deal with other people's computers that are runnning something different from yours?
Really, it will never work. People keep saying they want choices. It's only talk. When there's an abundance of choice the average consumer gets confused and pissed. It always ends up being just a few key players. And in the case of desktop OSes, it always goes to just one.
IOC sues Slashdot and all members who have mentioned the word "Olympics" in this post...
All these new domain suffixes are getting pointless. Does anyone actually think it's going to work? The only people who will benefit are the domain name registrars. That's about it.
You're forgetting, most collocation data centers charge you by the 95th percentile. With most of the traffic bunched up duing the weekday hours (most likely), the guy is probably paying for many more Mbps than what you're calculating.
By asking them to publish their books for free, so that Google can make money off of advertising on someone else's back... that already is voting with your wallet. They've just been deprived of much of their earnings.
Writing to these publishers won't do any good. You're not giving them any better alternatives.
The real problem here isn't the people. It's the system. When you have a court system that routinely allow HUGE multi-million dollar judgments on frivolous lawsuits, you end up encouringing merit-less lawsuits. This results companies slapping on these labels etc etc.
Next time someone's kid goes and shoots up a bunch of people, and the parents sue the makers of {name your video game}, the courts should kick the parents to the curb and fine their asses.
First, 99.9999% of kids that play them don't go out committing crimes, so why should everybody suffer because of a couple of Darwinian rejects? This is how you want society to be shaped? By a couple of bad apples?
Second, why is it the government's job to babysit your kids? The government is treading on waters it should not have the power to tread on. Big government equals bad government. Communism is just around the corner...
I would like to test it on all those phone sex operators I talk to... errr I mean female friends.
This IS evil by Google. You guys can justify their behavior however you'd like, but I can't.
The information presented is right in Google's own search engine, via simple searches! It's not like the reporter had to dig deep dark corners to find it.
But more importantly, to ban a whole organization based on one article that's not even that offensive? Do you really want to support this idea of big business, aka. Google, bullying little guys when something they don't like a message?
Look at the stock industry. It's rife with similar evil tactics. X corp. doesn't like Z analyst's criticism of their company. X corp. bans Z's parent company from future access to stocks, insider info, etc. Z's parent company withdraws Z's criticism. Pretty soon all you see are buy buy buy articles with lots of fluff and lies for investors. And this happens routinely.
Don't support this. This is evil behavior.
First of all, prove your point regarding people becoming poorer after Walmart moves in.
Second, you are basically advocating fatter profits for businesses, because Walmart competes and steals customers because they are much cheaper. Customers benefit greatly as a result. This is why people flock there. You didn't think people just go to Walmart because they like cramming with all those annoying crowds did you?
So, you are for businesses. People who support Walmart are for cheaper prices, hence consumers. Who's evil?
I've been using Linux for the longest time, but after countless times where I've had to downgrade to a lower version (Fedora/RedHat) due to incompatible/non-existent SCSI driver support I'm in doubt as to whether Linux really is ready for an enterprise environment.
Does it not strike one as ridiculous when an older kernel, and thus Linux distribution, actually provides support for many SCSI adapters while newer ones just don't?
Here's what I had to do with my latest install. I was trying to install Fedora 3 on a server with a LSI Logic SCSI card (built-in to the motherboard). The damn thing wouldn't see the SCSI adaptor, and thus the drives. No driver updates could be found anywhere. I searched everywhere.
So I tried Fedora 2. No go. Then RedHat 9. Voila! Now it works. Now isn't that charming...
Could someone help clarify as to how this system calculates who you are similar to in terms of voting pattern? Suppose I'm a user that has downloaded A, B, and C. Does this mean the system would have to take someone who has also downloaded A, B, and C, and have voted the same way as me to give me an idea if file D is likely to be good?
With so many files, there would be a very small number of peoople that would have downloaded the same files as I have.
That's a rhetorical question we all know the answer to. If (and that's a big IF) this dude bothers replying to this question, you know he will be putting on the Microsoft spin, not admitting to it, and at the same time making it seem like MS won't make it less interoperable in the future.
//can still get by 100% without it
Bull. Once this is out you think developers won't be going to the left and right click routine that Windows users have been used to for many years? If that's the case, WHY bother even coming up with this mouse?
Who's fault is it if you don't bother reading what's usually just a fold-out, 2-page pamphlet instructing you to CHANGE THE DEFAULT PASSWORD?
I don't know whether to laugh, or to cry...
Now /. users can finally get girlfriends...
In other news, the "internet" has been found to be a fount of malware...
No. The problem is in people who like to generalize and use hyperbole, similar to you saying "99% of the people here on Slashdot voted for..."
If you don't like it don't do the exact same thing.
Microsoft is violating California laws giving workers the right to change jobs
I believe the correct phrase should have been:
"Microsoft is violating California laws giving workers the right to WORK"
There's a slight difference.
If I can help it, I would never use VOIP service from one of the greedy telcos. For the longest time these guys have been dicking us around, nickle and diming us to death with their stupid surcharges, fees, long distance rates, etc.
I distinctly remember a few years ago I made a call to Asia using AT&T as the long distance provider. It ended up being almost $3 per minute, no joke! In order to take advantage of their "lower" (which is still way way higher than VOIP service) rates, I'd have to pay some stupid monthly fee and join some plan.
Now that VOIP is here, these guys are finally offering it to compete. I say screw them. They've done the same to us for decades, tried and is still trying to put up roadblocks to VOIP. I would not trust these bast(a)rds ever again.
You're fired!