It is of interest because it involves developing space vehicles on a limited budget. China's space programme is also of interest for the same reason. If Iraq had a space programme that would be interesting too... but that would let Bush proclaim that he's finally found that elusive WMD program.
disclaimer: I'm Indian too and have worked as a SW developer in Delhi and Bangalore
1. Yes GNU/Linux is yet to make serious inroads for the home user. 2. No, GNU/Linux IS a huge deal in most universities and large companies. 3. I went to IIT Delhi and we had more than a couple of labs running purely GNU/Linux and that was not because we couldn't afford Windows etc. (Actually IBM/Intel had provided machines with NT installed - we took it all out:-) and I hear things have taken off in the last 4 years since I left and there are more and more labs on campus that run GNU/Linux 4. I worked for one of the (then) largest SW subsidiary of an American company in India and guess what !! We had a choice of desktops - NT or GNU/Linux (IT staff supported both)... and a lot of us chose GNU/Linux... and it had nothing to do with saving money - since we had a site license for Windows NT ___ it had to do with the tools we needed and were comfortable with. 5. GNU/Linux is trickling to the home user in India... last time I was visiting my parents... my Dad (who paid someone to show him how to use email/web browsers) complained about his machine being really slow and unstable (its an old Pentium 100 from my college days)... I installed GNU/Linux for him on it and he didn't even notice any difference, he just sat back and went back to reading his email on Yahoo. 6. Someone pointed out that Indians will only follow something that makes monetary sense. Well Indians also hate to buy a new computer every 3 years and throw old equipment out... a lot of them are happy to recycle old PC's and install GNU/Linux on them to use for email/web surfing/chatting. 7. A lot of development being done in India (for overseas clients ) is web applications and many people already are building these on top of Apache, Tomcat, JBoss etc. This (I hope) will eventually influence the client's decision when they think of deploying these applications. So you should see more and more applications being deployed on Open Source/Free Software at the companies which outsource development to India.
Intel should have a new license for its microcode that prohibits use of any M$ products on its microprocessors unless they are open-sourced.... that would give them a real taste of their own medicine.
They should license the music only to be listened to by the person who purchased the license.
Why should my kid brother get to listen to music that I paid for!
As someone already mentioned... the primary reason (these days) for going n-Tier is that you can scale by load balancing the specific layer of your application which is taking the maximum hit.
Another reason (separating presentation from
other things)... lets graphic/page designers
work on the front end while application
developers develop the application in parallel.
Also it allows you to build different interfaces
(or even different applications) over a common
group of functionality (the business logic).
e.g. you might have an internal administrative interface for a system that has another interface open to the public internet and maybe a third monitoring and maintainance interface.
I think a disclaimer (in fine print - as on/.) on each page stating that
"the comments are the intellectual property and/or opinions of respective posters and the site does not endorse the views of individuals"
should be good enough. But DONT EVER back off in case a large corp's legal contacts you wrt a particular posting. Just politely tell them to contact the original poster and (let him/her remove it him/herself if (s)he wants).
Also remember moderation actually implies that you are party to it.... so think hard before moderating.
Its shocking and very dissappointing to read all the posting here. Even more dissappointing is the fact that these are views of slashdotters. Honestly expected them to be more "open" etc.
As someone who recently started work in the US, I wish I had known earlier that deep down even the bright Americans are of such opinions. I came to the US not because I earn a higher salary here... To all the "frogs in the well" here who think that Indians come here to avoid starving... incidentally my purchasing power in India was much higher than out here and before you conclude... my salary here makes a lot of my american coleagues here envious.
I came here to work with the best people in the industry.
A lot of you will yell at me saying "Go back if you don't like this... blah blah"... in probably better or worse words.
All I have to offer such people is "thank you" for letting me know the true feelings of americans towards people like me - they are too ashamed to say such things on my face:-).
I wish more Indians just leave this country to run itself... Good luck.
They are more like cars that will put the horse carriages out of business... so they want them banned by saying that people will use cars to commit robberies... though I think more people got robbed in horse carriages....:-)
I've never used a DVD player on a PC (windoze or linux) as I don't have a DVD drive:-(
But how do the windoze DVD players figure out what region you are located in to allow region based locking. Or is that feature (?) absent from PC DVD players.
Also what would be the MPAA's response if someone just wrote and released a DVD player for linux (without any code) to just allow us to play DVD's on linux without really allowing us to copy (who wants to copy and share 4 GB of stuff anyway). They wouldn't be able to use the argument that it is being used to pirate movies anyway.
One reason why I would still use the regular website would be coz wireless access is a zillion times more expensive (and slow etc.) than regular access.
On a different note : Qualcomm is reportedly doing some tests on delivering mp3 stored on my.mp3.com to devices in cars. What I last read about Qualcomm CDMA was that it has a bandwidth of 9.6 kbps per channel... so I wonder what it sounds like.... then maybe they are doing something else.
Going through all the discussions about patents... I think we (including me) have developed a knee-jerk reaction towards patents and their holders. Although the real problem may lie in the legislature and the executive (the patent office in this case).
Its similar to the way copyrights don't necessarily restrict people from using creative works (though often they do). I think the whole concept of intellectual property needs an overhaul to catch up with technology and rampant misuse.
I've heard of people patenting recipes such as Indian Chicken Curry (yes 2 Japanese got smart:)
... now something like that not only needs to be denied etc. but should be punished so that people don't try to make a quick buck.
At the same time people like Linus (yes he does hold a few patents - in the chip design area) who have come up with real solutions to complex problems (after lot of hard work) need to rewarded for their efforts. Someone should not be able to copy techniques they have developed without their permission.
I think patents have a positive side as well.... they allow people (specially corporations) to fund and publish research. This benefits the scientific community immensly. I think (i think their already is) their should be a clause that allows someone to use patented "intellectual property" for educational/non-commercial use without prior permission.
We need a broader debate on "intellectual property" rather than knee-jerk reactions.
Of course your great great grandparents loved the "culture" of the "new world" so much that they moved here and killed the native people owning that culture right ? They obviously didn't do it because they couldn't feed their family in the dark ages of Europe.
Being someone in the US on an H1-b... and also Indian... it is dissappointing to read the opinions of people on a site like slashdot. I agree that a lot of things mentioned against the H1-b program are true... but not in entirety.
There are 2 sides to every fact presented so far...
1) US companies hire indians for cheap labor.
Yes... a lot of them do... BUT a lot of them don't. Coming from one of the best know Indian Universities (in the US)... the IIT.. I know of the kind of salaries that are offered to certain groups of people. Salaries (we are talking 100k+) that suddenly turn the whole idea of CHEAP labor on its head. That is not to say that there aren't companies that don't hire people who can't communicate, program or think... and put them 10 in a room... take away their passports... the list goes on and on... But it is wrong to generalize. FYI Linus Torvalds (who I'm sure ranks amongst the Gods on slashdot) works on an H1-b.
2) It is sheer hypocrisy to argue that CHEAP LABOR is bad... For years the United States (and the G-8) has been forcing developing countries (called third world countries here) including India, into opening up their markets so that they could flood the indian markets with cheaper and better goods. Goods that the Indian public wanted but were too expensive coming from indian manufacturers and sometimes just not available. The local industry cried foul... as it knew that it meant they would suffer losses. All this goes under the misunderstood term called "Globalisation of markets". Well why this hyposcrisy of goods market v/s labor market
I know one can't equate goods and people but I'm just making a point.
3) Amusing that someone said that Indians can't communicate in english... on the contrary... having worked in England for a few months... I came to the realization that a lot of indians speak better english than the british and americans.
4) Workers on H1-B are tied to their employers for their visa! I'll agree that it is true for some of the immigrant workers, but not at all for the smart ones. One of the biggest concerns that companies sponsoring H1-b's have, is that the employee could find another job in the US and the company would have spent money on his visa. The H1-B is transferable, i.e. if I find another better paying company (which generally has no problem getting the H1-b transferred) then I'll move. So no employer can pay a good immigrant worker below industry rates and get away with it.
Well if everything is as I have said... what is the problem... well there are a lot of black sheep out there... and they need to be punished severely... to set precedents... They are the phoney companies that often go by the name of "consulting companies" (they are called "body shoppers" in india). They are the companies which get people on H1-b's then put 10 people in a house, make them sign phoney documents... take away passports... prepare false resumes of people.... the list goes on. These are the people who need to be taught a lesson. They are the ones who misuse the H1-B program.
I do hope that people of the US realise that immigrants are what built this country what it is. The reason the US is so powerful a nation is because the most ambitious, hard working people endured many hardships to come here and build this nation what it is over the centuries.
Maybe I'm missing something here or just out of touch with things, but what does the ruling say about microsoft's web properties ? Which division would that go to ? To me that appears to be of significant importance. Also what about the controlling stake microsoft has in many companies ?
Slashdot Mirror
It is of interest because it involves developing space vehicles on a limited budget. ... but that would let Bush proclaim that he's finally found that elusive WMD program.
China's space programme is also of interest for the same reason.
If Iraq had a space programme that would be interesting too
disclaimer: I'm Indian too and have worked as a SW developer in Delhi and Bangalore
:-) and I hear things have taken off in the last 4 years since I left and there are more and more labs on campus that run GNU/Linux ... and it had nothing to do with saving money - since we had a site license for Windows NT ___ it had to do with the tools we needed and were comfortable with. ... last time I was visiting my parents ... my Dad (who paid someone to show him how to use email/web browsers) complained about his machine being really slow and unstable (its an old Pentium 100 from my college days) ... I installed GNU/Linux for him on it and he didn't even notice any difference, he just sat back and went back to reading his email on Yahoo. ... a lot of them are happy to recycle old PC's and install GNU/Linux on them to use for email/web surfing/chatting.
1. Yes GNU/Linux is yet to make serious inroads for the home user.
2. No, GNU/Linux IS a huge deal in most universities and large companies.
3. I went to IIT Delhi and we had more than a couple of labs running purely GNU/Linux and that was not because we couldn't afford Windows etc. (Actually IBM/Intel had provided machines with NT installed - we took it all out
4. I worked for one of the (then) largest SW subsidiary of an American company in India and guess what !! We had a choice of desktops - NT or GNU/Linux (IT staff supported both)... and a lot of us chose GNU/Linux
5. GNU/Linux is trickling to the home user in India
6. Someone pointed out that Indians will only follow something that makes monetary sense. Well Indians also hate to buy a new computer every 3 years and throw old equipment out
7. A lot of development being done in India (for overseas clients ) is web applications and many people already are building these on top of Apache, Tomcat, JBoss etc. This (I hope) will eventually influence the client's decision when they think of deploying these applications. So you should see more and more applications being deployed on Open Source/Free Software at the companies which outsource development to India.
Intel should have a new license for its microcode that prohibits use of any M$ products on its microprocessors unless they are open-sourced .... that would give them a real taste of their own medicine.
They should license the music only to be listened to by the person who purchased the license.
Why should my kid brother get to listen to music that I paid for!
As someone already mentioned ... the primary reason (these days) for going n-Tier is that you can scale by load balancing the specific layer of your application which is taking the maximum hit.
... lets graphic/page designers
Another reason (separating presentation from
other things)
work on the front end while application
developers develop the application in parallel.
Also it allows you to build different interfaces
(or even different applications) over a common
group of functionality (the business logic).
e.g. you might have an internal administrative interface for a system that has another interface open to the public internet and maybe a third monitoring and maintainance interface.
I think a disclaimer (in fine print - as on /.) on each page stating that
.... so think hard before moderating.
"the comments are the intellectual property and/or opinions of respective posters and the site does not endorse the views of individuals"
should be good enough. But DONT EVER back off in case a large corp's legal contacts you wrt a particular posting. Just politely tell them to contact the original poster and (let him/her remove it him/herself if (s)he wants).
Also remember moderation actually implies that you are party to it
Its shocking and very dissappointing to read all the posting here. Even more dissappointing is the fact that these are views of slashdotters. Honestly expected them to be more "open" etc.
... my salary here makes a lot of my american coleagues here envious.
... blah blah" ... in probably better or worse words.
:-).
As someone who recently started work in the US, I wish I had known earlier that deep down even the bright Americans are of such opinions. I came to the US not because I earn a higher salary here... To all the "frogs in the well" here who think that Indians come here to avoid starving... incidentally my purchasing power in India was much higher than out here and before you conclude
I came here to work with the best people in the industry.
A lot of you will yell at me saying "Go back if you don't like this
All I have to offer such people is "thank you" for letting me know the true feelings of americans towards people like me - they are too ashamed to say such things on my face
I wish more Indians just leave this country to run itself... Good luck.
MP3's are not like guns!!!!!!!!
... though I think more people got robbed in horse carriages .... :-)
They are more like cars that will put the horse carriages out of business... so they want them banned by saying that people will use cars to commit robberies
If region locking is built into hardware these days, that would imply that even using DeCSS would not do any good.... ???????
Can the sectors be read of the disk or the drive just refuses you to read anything ?
Don't understand ?????
I've never used a DVD player on a PC (windoze or linux) as I don't have a DVD drive :-(
But how do the windoze DVD players figure out what region you are located in to allow region based locking. Or is that feature (?) absent from PC DVD players.
Also what would be the MPAA's response if someone just wrote and released a DVD player for linux (without any code) to just allow us to play DVD's on linux without really allowing us to copy (who wants to copy and share 4 GB of stuff anyway). They wouldn't be able to use the argument that it is being used to pirate movies anyway.
One reason why I would still use the regular website would be coz wireless access is a zillion times more expensive (and slow etc.) than regular access.
On a different note : Qualcomm is reportedly doing some tests on delivering mp3 stored on my.mp3.com to devices in cars. What I last read about Qualcomm CDMA was that it has a bandwidth of 9.6 kbps per channel... so I wonder what it sounds like.... then maybe they are doing something else.
Going through all the discussions about patents ... I think we (including me) have developed a knee-jerk reaction towards patents and their holders. Although the real problem may lie in the legislature and the executive (the patent office in this case).
:)
Its similar to the way copyrights don't necessarily restrict people from using creative works (though often they do). I think the whole concept of intellectual property needs an overhaul to catch up with technology and rampant misuse.
I've heard of people patenting recipes such as Indian Chicken Curry (yes 2 Japanese got smart
... now something like that not only needs to be denied etc. but should be punished so that people don't try to make a quick buck.
At the same time people like Linus (yes he does hold a few patents - in the chip design area) who have come up with real solutions to complex problems (after lot of hard work) need to rewarded for their efforts. Someone should not be able to copy techniques they have developed without their permission.
I think patents have a positive side as well.... they allow people (specially corporations) to fund and publish research. This benefits the scientific community immensly. I think (i think their already is) their should be a clause that allows someone to use patented "intellectual property" for educational/non-commercial use without prior permission.
We need a broader debate on "intellectual property" rather than knee-jerk reactions.
Of course your great great grandparents loved the "culture" of the "new world" so much that they moved here and killed the native people owning that culture right ? They obviously didn't do it because they couldn't feed their family in the dark ages of Europe.
Your argument stinks!!
Being someone in the US on an H1-b... and also Indian... it is dissappointing to read the opinions of people on a site like slashdot. I agree that a lot of things mentioned against the H1-b program are true... but not in entirety.
... the IIT.. I know of the kind of salaries that are offered to certain groups of people. Salaries (we are talking 100k+) that suddenly turn the whole idea of CHEAP labor on its head. That is not to say that there aren't companies that don't hire people who can't communicate, program or think... and put them 10 in a room ... take away their passports ... the list goes on and on... But it is wrong to generalize. FYI Linus Torvalds (who I'm sure ranks amongst the Gods on slashdot) works on an H1-b.
... as it knew that it meant they would suffer losses. All this goes under the misunderstood term called "Globalisation of markets". Well why this hyposcrisy of goods market v/s labor market
... having worked in England for a few months ... I came to the realization that a lot of indians speak better english than the british and americans.
... and they need to be punished severely... to set precedents... They are the phoney companies that often go by the name of "consulting companies" (they are called "body shoppers" in india). They are the companies which get people on H1-b's then put 10 people in a house, make them sign phoney documents... take away passports ... prepare false resumes of people .... the list goes on. These are the people who need to be taught a lesson. They are the ones who misuse the H1-B program.
There are 2 sides to every fact presented so far...
1) US companies hire indians for cheap labor.
Yes... a lot of them do... BUT a lot of them don't. Coming from one of the best know Indian Universities (in the US)
2) It is sheer hypocrisy to argue that CHEAP LABOR is bad... For years the United States (and the G-8) has been forcing developing countries (called third world countries here) including India, into opening up their markets so that they could flood the indian markets with cheaper and better goods. Goods that the Indian public wanted but were too expensive coming from indian manufacturers and sometimes just not available. The local industry cried foul
I know one can't equate goods and people but I'm just making a point.
3) Amusing that someone said that Indians can't communicate in english... on the contrary
4) Workers on H1-B are tied to their employers for their visa! I'll agree that it is true for some of the immigrant workers, but not at all for the smart ones. One of the biggest concerns that companies sponsoring H1-b's have, is that the employee could find another job in the US and the company would have spent money on his visa. The H1-B is transferable, i.e. if I find another better paying company (which generally has no problem getting the H1-b transferred) then I'll move. So no employer can pay a good immigrant worker below industry rates and get away with it.
Well if everything is as I have said... what is the problem... well there are a lot of black sheep out there
I do hope that people of the US realise that immigrants are what built this country what it is. The reason the US is so powerful a nation is because the most ambitious, hard working people endured many hardships to come here and build this nation what it is over the centuries.
Maybe I'm missing something here or just out of touch with things, but what does the ruling say about microsoft's web properties ? Which division would that go to ? To me that appears to be of significant importance.
Also what about the controlling stake microsoft has in many companies ?
You're forgetting gcc that you use to compile the latest kernel the minute you get your hands on it.