This whole thread is irrelevant to the economics of software development, as they affect developers in rich countries (i.e. most of us).
Take a look at sites like http://www.elance.com - you will see the future of software development. In the near future, projects will be outsourced to companies in Russia where top-notch developers cost $20/hour. In the slightly more distant future, projects will be outsourced to developers in India and Bangladesh who cost $8/hour. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to work on somebody else's projects for rates like that. I'd rather work for $0 on my own projects, and GPL the results.
There's one thing I don't get. We are tax payers, the people we elect are law-makers, they are paid to find solutions to common problems. They love passing laws. But WHY do they always have to go against the population and not work with them?
They don't always go against the population's needs. They want to get re-elected, so they do whatever gets the biggest campaign contributions from corporations or unions. Usually that does mean acting against the public interest, but not always. It would help if voters were more influenced by reasoned discussion and less influenced by sheer volume of advertising, but that won't happen in the foreseeable future.
A nitpick: "taxpayers" and "voters" are far from being the same set of people. Many people are voters without being required to pay taxes, and many people who do not have the right to vote are required to pay taxes.
British law can prosecute you if you publish certain material from the UK (including FTPing to another country)
You're missing the point, which is that the Brit prosecutor can't force the offshore server company to provide the evidence against you. Your comment and this response apply to any country AFAIK.
The hosting provider I go with is Esosoft [esosoft.net], and although they don't offer alot of bells and whistles, they do support PHP, Perl & C CGI, Frontpage 2K extensions
I won't buy anything from a company that has "Best experienced with Microsoft Internet Explorer" on its home page.
Just upload your page to Freenet[freenetproject.org]. And it's anonymous so you won't even have to answer to the law
Freenet is interesting, but I don't think it's an answer to the original question because Freenet pages are not permanent. It's more like an anonymous Usenet where every posting is in HTML and has X-No-Archive:Yes, than a collection of web sites. At least, that's my understanding. I've never actually used it, though.
The legislation itself is unremarkable; it does very little. The biggest loophole seems to be the classification of information as "sensitive" or "non-sensitive".
The political goal is to defuse the hostility of the tech-savvy community, by associating Hollings name with legislation that is superficially reasonable in intent. Judging by the comments on/. , it's working.
The simple measure here: "as long as you love doing it, you'll keep doing it." Isn't this true for any career?
That's a young person's attitude. Reality is, "as long as you're not discriminated against because of your age, you'll keep doing it." I'm a contractor in my 50s, I have top-notch references, and being interviewed is generally equivalent to getting an offer (especially if the employer is competent at interviewing). But I just don't get interviews any more. When my current contract ends, it looks like forced retirement time. And that's not good because on a programmer's income, I haven't saved enough money for a decent retirement. My advice to a young person considering a career in IT is: Try to think ahead, now, before it's too late. It's interesting work - until the PHBs won't read your resume any more, because they "know" that anyone 10 years older than they are is "too old". (The torrent of really cheap programmers from Bangladesh etc isn't going to help, either.) Do the work you enjoy for a while - but be absolutely sure to get into another career before it's too late. Plan to start the crossover in your twenties.
Let them support the hardware first. Sometimes there are things you may not understand that keeps them from just saying: "HERE IS HOW THE DEVICE WORKS! - COMPETITORS PLEASE COPY IT"
There is a world of difference between interface specs, and telling "how the device works". Reminds me of the story about the kid whose father told him that if he didn't go to school, he'd never understand how common, everyday things like electric light, worked.
The kid looked at his father pityingly and said: "I already know how electric lights work. You flip the switch, and the light comes on".
Keep this in mind when you read a comment like the one I'm replying to. We're not asking for the equivalent of how to make resistive filaments that withstand temperatures of 3000 degrees C for thousands of hours. We're asking the equivalent of, which switches do I hit to make the light come on.
ABC can't spell 'terawatt'
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 1
And they seem to be teaching Slashdotters to misspell it, too.
Many of these countries are very successful of blaming the west for their lot in life. It's always easier to blame others for your problems than it is to look inside and see what YOU are doing wrong.
Crap. The main source of conflict in the world today is the Israeli occupation of the Palestine territories. The Palestinians in the refugee camps (or their parents) were driven out of their country by terrorism and massacres, by the founders of Israel. Their land, their livelihoods, were stolen from them. Right now they're being killed by an army with tanks and warplanes, supplied by the USA. They do not have tanks, they do not have warplanes. If they try to hit back they're labeled "terrorists" in the US media. Then jerks like you tell them it's their own fault. It's largely America's fault. Without uncritical US support for any Israeli action, however extreme, and massive amounts of American money, Israel would have come to a decent accommodation with its neighbors years ago.
the government IT workers realize the grass really is greener on the corporate side of the fence
Grass is probably greener on the corporate side for workers. But don't forget that a lot of government employees don't actually do any work. For them, the grass is definitely greener with the government - any company that planned to stay in business would fire them.
imigrant tech visas are still going up, nearly 400,000 requested last year, despite the tech slowdown
Yup, that shows the power of corporate lobbying. If the only way to fund the CEO's $20M bonus is to reduce software-engineer salaries to the wage level prevailing in Bangladesh, the Department of Labor will be persuaded to certify the requisite number of Bangladeshi replacements for the current staff.
Everyone is making the same point, and it was addressed in the article. He basically believes that every time you moved back in time it would create a "branch" so to speak, that would continue on in the altered way. This does not address the point at all. Suppose you travel backwards in time, and murder your parents before you were conceived. If this creates a "branch", starting from the moment of the murder, in which you never existed, what is the answer, in that branch, to the question: "who killed that man and woman"?
Re:Logically impossible...
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
There are plenty of things in modern physics that are "logically" impossible
There is nothing in modern physics that is logically impossible. There are many things that are remote from everyday experience, and which therefore seem strange. Logic is the main tool of the theoretical physicist.
Most physicists who are not nuts believe that traveling backwards in time is logically impossible. For example, someone could travel back to a time before he was conceived, and murder his parents.
Debian includes more applications. And it's cheaper (even if you buy the CDs). It tends to be lag behind other distros when new stuff comes out (for example the current Debian stable distro, 'potato', is still using the 2.2 kernel - Woody will be the first Debian stable release based on 2.4). Part of the reason is that a Debian release is tested on 11 different architectures including Sun Sparc, 68000, alpha, etc whereas Mandrake is available only for 4 architectures (and most distros are just for Intel). OTOH this extra testing uncovers bugs that other distros just ship; Debian is widely believed to be the most stable and most nearly bug-free of all distros. Mandrake's main distinguishing feature is its GUI. It's supposed to be the easiest distro to learn and use. Debian is at the opposite end of the GNU/Linux spectrum in this regard, you need to be comfortable with the command line to like Debian.
The web page that Sharp dedicates to its handheld is here
But if you're using a typical Linux browser and go to this page, all you'll see is a statement that you have to use Netscape or MSIE, with a link to where you can download MSIE.
While Sharp is shitting on the web community like this, I personally will not buy anything from Sharp. There is no valid excuse for it. Sharp's excuse is probably that their web site was built by a college dropout who seemed to be a geek and was real cheap - but that's not a valid excuse.
I understood it to be a symbolic algebra package, somewhat like Maxima. (which is derived, I believe, from a version of Macsyma). Maxima is open-source but presumably the organisers of the conference consider it "not good enough" in some way.
A few minutes of Google searching will reveal free ISPs in many European countries. That's not your real problem. Your real problem is that if you visit 4 different European countries, you will probably need 3 different phone jacks. Do you really need your laptop? Why not use a free web-based email service like Yahoo or even Hotmail, then you can check and sent your email from an Internet cafe. These seem to be more common outside the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
ICANN has exceeded its authority, does not operate in an open fashion, and is dangerously unaccountable
Maybe substitute "The US Government" for "ICANN"?
GPL prevents the part about companies being able to benefit,
Wrong. Companies can benefit from GPLd software by using it.
Many, many more companies are users of software than are publishers of software.
This whole thread is irrelevant to the economics of software development, as they affect developers in rich countries (i.e. most of us).
Take a look at sites like http://www.elance.com - you will see the future of software development. In the near future, projects will be outsourced to companies in Russia where top-notch developers cost $20/hour. In the slightly more distant future, projects will be outsourced to developers in India and Bangladesh who cost $8/hour. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to work on somebody else's projects for rates like that. I'd rather work for $0 on my own projects, and GPL the results.
There's one thing I don't get. We are tax payers, the people we elect are law-makers, they are paid to find solutions to common problems. They love passing laws. But WHY do they always have to go against the population and not work with them?
They don't always go against the population's needs. They want to get re-elected, so they do whatever gets the biggest campaign contributions from corporations or unions. Usually that does mean acting against the public interest, but not always. It would help if voters were more influenced by reasoned discussion and less influenced by sheer volume of advertising, but that won't happen in the foreseeable future.
A nitpick: "taxpayers" and "voters" are far from being the same set of people. Many people are voters without being required to pay taxes, and many people who do not have the right to vote are required to pay taxes.
British law can prosecute you if you publish certain material from the UK (including FTPing to another country)
You're missing the point, which is that the Brit prosecutor can't force the offshore server company to provide the evidence against you. Your comment and this response apply to any country AFAIK.
The hosting provider I go with is Esosoft [esosoft.net], and although they don't offer alot of bells and whistles, they do support PHP, Perl & C CGI, Frontpage 2K extensions
I won't buy anything from a company that has "Best experienced with Microsoft Internet Explorer" on its home page.
It depends on where you live and where your host is based.
No, it depends only on where your host is based.
Just upload your page to Freenet[freenetproject.org]. And it's anonymous so you won't even have to answer to the law
Freenet is interesting, but I don't think it's an answer to the original question because Freenet pages are not permanent. It's more like an anonymous Usenet where every posting is in HTML and has X-No-Archive:Yes, than a collection of web sites. At least, that's my understanding. I've never actually used it, though.
The legislation itself is unremarkable; it does very little. The biggest loophole seems to be the classification of information as "sensitive" or "non-sensitive".
/. , it's working.
The political goal is to defuse the hostility of the tech-savvy community, by associating Hollings name with legislation that is superficially reasonable in intent. Judging by the comments on
The simple measure here: "as long as you love doing it, you'll keep doing it." Isn't this true for any career?
That's a young person's attitude. Reality is, "as long as you're not discriminated against because of your age, you'll keep doing it." I'm a contractor in my 50s, I have top-notch references, and being interviewed is generally equivalent to getting an offer (especially if the employer is competent at interviewing). But I just don't get interviews any more. When my current contract ends, it looks like forced retirement time. And that's not good because on a programmer's income, I haven't saved enough money for a decent retirement.
My advice to a young person considering a career in IT is: Try to think ahead, now, before it's too late. It's interesting work - until the PHBs won't read your resume any more, because they "know" that anyone 10 years older than they are is "too old". (The torrent of really cheap programmers from Bangladesh etc isn't going to help, either.) Do the work you enjoy for a while - but be absolutely sure to get into another career before it's too late. Plan to start the crossover in your twenties.
Let them support the hardware first. Sometimes there are things you may not understand that keeps them from just saying:
"HERE IS HOW THE DEVICE WORKS! - COMPETITORS PLEASE COPY IT"
There is a world of difference between interface specs, and telling "how the device works".
Reminds me of the story about the kid whose father told him that if he didn't go to school, he'd never understand how common, everyday things like electric light, worked.
The kid looked at his father pityingly and said: "I already know how electric lights work. You flip the switch, and the light comes on".
Keep this in mind when you read a comment like the one I'm replying to. We're not asking for the equivalent of how to make resistive filaments that withstand temperatures of 3000 degrees C for thousands of hours. We're asking the equivalent of, which switches do I hit to make the light come on.
And they seem to be teaching Slashdotters to misspell it, too.
Q: Do you have Linux drivers for the microscope?
A: The microscope is not supported on Linux* platforms.
And the few ads for it (I never saw one until today) position it as a kids' toy of no interest to anybody over 10.
This thing is a dynamite product. But by the time anybody actually hears about it, it's a "discontinued failure".
Maybe Intel should fire its entire marketing department and start over.
Many of these countries are very successful of blaming the west for their lot in life. It's always easier to blame others for your problems than it is to look inside and see what YOU are doing wrong.
Crap. The main source of conflict in the world today is the Israeli occupation of the Palestine territories. The Palestinians in the refugee camps (or their parents) were driven out of their country by terrorism and massacres, by the founders of Israel. Their land, their livelihoods, were stolen from them. Right now they're being killed by an army with tanks and warplanes, supplied by the USA. They do not have tanks, they do not have warplanes. If they try to hit back they're labeled "terrorists" in the US media. Then jerks like you tell them it's their own fault. It's largely America's fault. Without uncritical US support for any Israeli action, however extreme, and massive amounts of American money, Israel would have come to a decent accommodation with its neighbors years ago.
the government IT workers realize the grass really is greener on the corporate side of the fence
Grass is probably greener on the corporate side for workers. But don't forget that a lot of government employees don't actually do any work. For them, the grass is definitely greener with the government - any company that planned to stay in business would fire them.
imigrant tech visas are still going up, nearly 400,000 requested last year, despite the tech slowdown
Yup, that shows the power of corporate lobbying. If the only way to fund the CEO's $20M bonus is to reduce software-engineer salaries to the wage level prevailing in Bangladesh, the Department of Labor will be persuaded to certify the requisite number of Bangladeshi replacements for the current staff.
Everyone is making the same point, and it was addressed in the article. He basically believes that every time you moved back in time it would create a "branch" so to speak, that would continue on in the altered way.
This does not address the point at all. Suppose you travel backwards in time, and murder your parents before you were conceived. If this creates a "branch", starting from the moment of the murder, in which you never existed, what is the answer, in that branch, to the question: "who killed that man and woman"?
There are plenty of things in modern physics that are "logically" impossible
There is nothing in modern physics that is logically impossible. There are many things that are remote from everyday experience, and which therefore seem strange. Logic is the main tool of the theoretical physicist.
Most physicists who are not nuts believe that traveling backwards in time is logically impossible. For example, someone could travel back to a time before he was conceived, and murder his parents.
Debian includes more applications. And it's cheaper (even if you buy the CDs). It tends to be lag behind other distros when new stuff comes out (for example the current Debian stable distro, 'potato', is still using the 2.2 kernel - Woody will be the first Debian stable release based on 2.4). Part of the reason is that a Debian release is tested on 11 different architectures including Sun Sparc, 68000, alpha, etc whereas Mandrake is available only for 4 architectures (and most distros are just for Intel). OTOH this extra testing uncovers bugs that other distros just ship; Debian is widely believed to be the most stable and most nearly bug-free of all distros. Mandrake's main distinguishing feature is its GUI. It's supposed to be the easiest distro to learn and use. Debian is at the opposite end of the GNU/Linux spectrum in this regard, you need to be comfortable with the command line to like Debian.
The web page that Sharp dedicates to its handheld is here
But if you're using a typical Linux browser and go to this page, all you'll see is a statement that you have to use Netscape or MSIE, with a link to where you can download MSIE.
While Sharp is shitting on the web community like this, I personally will not buy anything from Sharp. There is no valid excuse for it. Sharp's excuse is probably that their web site was built by a college dropout who seemed to be a geek and was real cheap - but that's not a valid excuse.
would it be ok if we try to prevent it from happening again first? like maybe by going after people who plan terrorist attacks against us...
Has it occurred to any American leader to wonder why people should be willing to sacrifice their lives to damage America?
From the mainstream US sources I have seen, reasoning never rises above "America is so wonderful, people envy us."
Clue: nobody ever sacrificed his life because of envy.
I understood it to be a symbolic algebra package, somewhat like Maxima. (which is derived, I believe, from a version of Macsyma). Maxima is open-source but presumably the organisers of the conference consider it "not good enough" in some way.
Everybody I know now wants a mac,
Can't imagine why such a crude puff for Mac got modded up.
I know lots of people who want better Windows boxes and several people who want Linux boxes. I know exactly one person who wants a Mac.
A few minutes of Google searching will reveal free ISPs in many European countries. That's not your real problem. Your real problem is that if you visit 4 different European countries, you will probably need 3 different phone jacks. Do you really need your laptop? Why not use a free web-based email service like Yahoo or even Hotmail, then you can check and sent your email from an Internet cafe. These seem to be more common outside the USA.