It is beyond me how you find anything racist in this. Allow me to clarify: Something isn't racist just because it deals with racial issues - it must also discriminate. Stating the obvious facts that people mix more today than they used to, and that this will create a more homogenous world population is in no way racist.
OK, I may have posted before I calmed down, but suggesting that single-race genetic pools are better for evolution than mixed race genetic-pools sounds racist to me.
Even the suggestion that there will be a uniform mixing of genes for the entire world population is utter nonsense.
There are at least 7 major gene pools, "white", african, arabic/Indian , han/mongolian, south-asian, melanesian, polynesian, inuit/native american plus hundreds if not thousands of sub-variations.
To suggest that all of these gene pools will be uniformly mixed into one 'slightly brown homo-sapien' anytime soon is so absurd that it can only be a 'red herring' to distract from the real meme of the article. ie. English people marrying blacks and Indians is retarting evolution.
No, no, no. As is widely known - and described in an earlier post - succes does *not* result in more kids. Quite the opposite actually. Those who don't win the nobel-prize or run a multi-billion company tend to produce more offspring instead, put bruntly. So we actually have a selection towards the lower end of the spectre.
I think you missed my point. Currently FINANCIAL OR WORDLY success does not lead to more children. I was talking about evolutionary leap in the strength of the immune system. It is my contention that this type of change would lead to having more children.
Remember, it is only recently that there is a correlation between financial success and less children. When the US was first settled, the wealthy had as many children as the poor. And they had a much better survival ratio too.
Let me get this straight: In Shanghai or Calcutta, a vicious variation of the common cold is contained completely from the rest of the world, and if it ever leaks out 99% of us are doomed because we have weakened resistances?
No, that's not what I said. I was trying to imply that those people with a stronger immune system will have many advantages because of their increased resistance to the ONE REMAINING THREAT TO HUMAN LIFE. We've killed nearly all the dangerous animals. In the industrialised world we have eliminated the mosquito threat. We've cleaned, poisoned and sterilized our environment so that the chances of any bacteria remaining are miniscule.
The only remaining threat to the industrialised world is catching diseases from other humans. And my point about cold-strains is that threat becomes greater each year. And it doesn't necessarily have to kill you. If your office colleague comes back from Shanghai, and spreads the latest strain of Shanghai flu through the office, and it knocks each person out of productive work for say, four weeks, then the person whose immune system is strong enough to resist the flu will become four weeks more productive than the rest of the office.
Even better, the office will be free from the usual distractions while half the people are home sick, and so they may even become eight weeks more productive.
Additionally, they wont infect their children with the flu, thus giving their children a four week learning advantage at school.
Plus, they won't need to pay for a Doctor's consultation, medicine, cough lollies etc etc.
If this happens every year, or even twice a year, over the period of a lifetime, these people will gain a huge advantage, which it is my contention will translate into evolutionary change.
I suppose it's just dumb luck that none of the thousands of europeans and americans who visit these places every year, haven't caught this deadly flu yet? Of course not.
I know you were trying to be funny, but you are completely wrong. Shanghai flu has spread through populations in London, Chicago and IIRC Paris. Now, did it wipe out the population? Of course not. Did it put a massive strain on the health system, interupt productive work and cause weeks of bed-ridden suffering for hundreds of people, absolutely!
This is not only total nonsense, it is state sponsored racism.
Take this for example....
In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change. This increased mixing can be gauged by calculating the number of miles between a person's birthplace and his or her partner's, then between their parents' birthplaces, and finally, between their grandparents'.
In virtually every case, you will find that the number of miles drops dramatically the more that you head back into the past. Now people are going to universities and colleges where they meet and marry people from other continents. A generation ago, men and women rarely mated with anyone from a different town or city. Hence, the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population. Apart from that, there will be little change in the species.
Not only is this totally racist and white supremist horseshit, it is completely wrong.
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
Evolution works by trying combinations. When one particular combination hits exactly right for the current conditions at the current moment in time the result is a sudden and exponential success.
For example, let's imagine, that a certain blend of genes, from mixing certain groups of people who individually have strong immunity to different types of disease, produces children with an immune system that is 1-3 orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else.
These children will almost never get sick. Their brain development will be on average, much better, because they are never weakened by childhood diseases.
As they get older, they never visit conventional doctors, work harder and longer than the rest of the population without succumbing to the hundreds of different bacteria and virii that puts the rest of the population out of productive work 1-4 weeks of the year.
They will be less of a drain on society, as people in modern society are a much greater burden on the public purse at the end of their life (in Western Socialist countries, up to 50% of public health care is spent on the last 5 years of people's lives).
They will be productive for longer, creating wealth to a much greater age.
And with all this greater health, and wealth, and energy, they will produce A LOT MORE CHILDREN than the average person.
Modern medicine knows no cure for the COMMON COLD!! How many more diseases are we completely at a loss to stop right now?? Can you imagine a cold strain escaping from Shanghai, or Calcutta?
The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth.
Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains.
This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
Regarding 3) - this of course also has the downside that some companies tend to hire people who are technically unqualified for the job, but are better smoothtalkers than the guy actually able to do the job.....
Yes, this is a problem that I have witnessed myself. If the 'smooth talker' is the only person they hire, then it usually takes about 6 months before the employer figures it out.
OTOH, if there are technically competent people there, it soon becomes apparent that the 'smooth talker' is all talk and no substance. Then they usually last to the next paycheck.
This is why it's important to involve current IT people in the hiring process, OR, to design the system and set milestones for the person to achieve.
Hello,
I was planning to move into Linux development, and Kylix seemed to be the best available development environment for doing so. However, having reviewed your software license I have come to the conclusion that agreeing to such a license would not be a sound business decision.
Specifically,
==
12. AUDIT. During the term of this License and for one(1) year thereafter, upon reasonable notice and during normal business hours, Borland or its outside auditors will have the right to
enter your premises and access your records and computer systems to verify that you have paid to Borland the correct amounts owed under this License and determine whether the Products are being used inaccordance with the terms of this License. You willprovide reasonable assistance to Borland in connectionwith this provision. You agree to pay the cost of the audit if any underpayments during the period covered by theaudit amount to more than five percent (5%) of the fees actually owed for that period.
==
Of course, agreeing to disrupt productive work while you conduct your audit would cost my company far more than the original product licenses and so is an additional cost of using your software, one which cannot be justified.
However, if you were to agree to pay for the cost of disruption to my business of your intrusive audit, then perhaps there is room for negotiation.
Secondly, granting you the highest level of security access to our network would represent an unacceptable security breach. I sure you can understand that as your license terms implies that I am engaging in criminal activities, I must accord your company the same respect. To resolve this matter of trust, you could agree to allow my company access to your entire financial records, including bank account details, as a condition of presenting my cheque, being payment of said software license. If you would allow my company access to your financial records and bank account details, then we could certainly allow you access to our network.
Additionally,
==
14.4 No Jury Trials; No Joinder. Each party hereby irrevocably waives its right to a jury trial in any legal action, suit or proceeding between the parties arising out of or relating to this License. A copy this License may be filed with the court as written consent by both parties to a bench trial. You agree that any dispute you may have against Borland cannot be joined with any dispute of any other person or entity in a lawsuit, arbitration or any other proceeding, or resolved on a classwide basis.
==
While I have no intention of ever taking Borland to court, or joining a class action against them, it is preposterous to ask that I would waive any rights accorded to me by the Constitution or Common Law of the country I live in. Furthermore, it may in fact be impossible to waive such rights under the current laws anyway.
This clause implies a contempt of your customers that is totally unwarranted. It is insulting, and it reflects poorly on the character of the managers and directors of Borland. It certainly does not represent a company that I would wish to do business, or form a long term working relationship with.
It is my sincere hope that this license is a temporary oversight of a loyal but overzealous Borland employee, and that you are taking steps to remedy this situation before the consequences of this takes a toll on your companies sales and profitability.
I've noticed that it's governments, more than any other institution or demographic, that seem to latch on to Linux the most (witness adoptions in Scandinavian countries, the NSA in the States, China and so on). However, most distributions don't specifically target government at all; they generally either go after the serious Linux user or try to focus on user-friendliess (Corel and Mandrake, as examples).
This is an excellent observation, to which I would add that in my country, and other countries I have visited around the world, governments are not very well funded. And because of this, they often do a very poor job. Making the various levels of government more effecient would be of great benefit in many countries in the world. Unfortunately, many local governments have old PC's and no money for software licenses.
Enter Linux....
Most of the operating system and tools are free, and it can be parred down to run on older equipment. I have worked with small government departments and also volunteer organisations, and the thing that really breaks the bank is per-seat server licensing.
This is where linux really shines. Set up a mail/web/print server using a cheap PC, and you have taken the first step to moving the whole shop over to Linux.
Another thing is that in many of these small organisations, they use their PCs for very a specific purpose, like managing a single database. And so the question of Word, Excel, Access never comes up. Oftentimes, the people I meet in these small organisations have never used these applications, because they couldn't afford to purchase them.
Sometimes there was some 20yr old DOS programme running and they were happily using that to do their day to day work. Port that to ncurses and away you go. No gnashing of teeth about desktops and applications, just cheaper hardware and software so they can remain employed.
What if focusing on government demands was the answer? Ask them what they want, or develop with government needs (security, administration, etc.) in mind. If you do it right it shouldn't be hard to convince a government, be it municipal, provincial/state or maybe even national, that it's in their best interest to use a very cheap OS with few security holes and entertainment-based distractions (as much as we love Solitaire).
I think you are on to something here. I am going to look into it straight away. Local governments here are keen to improve, but are cash strapped. Picking specific applications for use in local government might be a good way to get Linux in.
The day that every motherboard's BIOS uses strong crypto to demand the master boot record be signed with a secret key known only to Microsoft is the day that Linux becomes a thing of the past.)
Not going to happen, unless the US goes to war with China. Most MoBos are made in Taiwan or Southern China, and you can bet your sweet lilly that the Chinese government (or the Japanese for that matter) is NOT going to give MS the power over every PC in China (or Japan).
So in the free world, you will always be able to buy a free and open PC. In the US, well it might go as you say, but hey, that's only the US.
The big money over the next decade will be in transforming the computer into an entertainment device.
Well, that's ONE of the things the computer will become, but the computer is evolving and transforming in a lot of other areas as well. Robotics, niche-manufacturing, traditional manufacturing , astro-physics, bio-technology, precision guided weapons/war machinery, virtual robotic control, communications, aerospace and fluid dynamics, chemistry and molecular design.
To say that the basic use of the computer will become to titilate the masses is IMHO limited thinking. Sure, there will always be a market for consumer devices, and content that plays on them, but to extend that to Microsoft taking over the BIOS of every computer made is just plain silly.
Perhaps there will be a fork in PC manufacturing. There will be a consumer device made which will basically be a PC with an idiot interface that makes it look like it's not a computer (hey, didn't Apple do that like, 18 years ago), and then there will be high-end, high performance "Workstations" made for academic, scientific and industrial/commercial applications.
Because I doubt that NASA are going to be using C# and Windows to build life-support/mission critical software on the next Space Shuttle or International Space Station.
I went to the site and they mention the 'Gorm Interface Builder' and the 'Project Center'. Are these two apps the equivelent of 'Project Builder' and 'Interface Builder' on OS X??
What would be really cool is to have the OpenStep API's and the Project Builder for creating apps in ObjC.
Your Uncle has a very good chance if he concentrates on a couple of things. I have years of experience, but no formal CS qualifications, and I have found I can always get work by following these guidelines.
1) Don't be desperate. In fact, be a little aloof.
2) Pick your companies carefully.
3) People skills will take you ten times further than technical skills. I've seen companies hire 'virtual savants' who were coding geniuses, but who couldn't work with others, were poor communicators and poor listeners and as a result the project fails.
Your Uncle needs to bring all his people skills from half a lifetime of experience to bear in the interview. You would be amazed at the look of relief that software project managers show when they meet someone who will listen carefully to the problems the company is trying to solve.
4) When asked, always steer the conversation to projects you have successfully completed and not particular skills in particular areas. Believe it or not, most companies don't want a walking encyclopedia, they want someone who will work at getting the project completed on time.
5) Provide references of ability to learn quickly. Not only is the tech industry changing rapidly, thus requiring those who can self-teach themselves new technologies, but the company will be interested in how fast you grasp the problems faced in their specific industry/company. After all, the reason SME's develop software in the first place is to gain a competitive advantage through one of their industry's 'hard tasks'.
6) Do some research. Not on the company, but on the industry they are in. This will allow you to ask intelligent questions in the interview.
7) Become interested in the project during the interview. Act as if their problem/project is an interesting foreign land to be explored (and possibly plundered). Interviewers look for those who are first motivated by the technical challenge, with the money just being a measure of success.
8) DON'T PANIC! Focus on your experience, your proven ability, your communication skills and your proven ability to learn. Those are four things that companies (with exception of behomoths) are looking for in every candidate. If a company uses clueless HR staff who only hire those who look good on paper, then I can guarantee you, you do NOT want to work for those life sucking, soul destroying beauracrats.
9) Employment agents are 90% morons. As a rule, I don't deal with them. I network. I call people, who know people, who know people. Once I had been doing that for a few years, people started to call me, because they knew my work ethic and my reputation for getting projects completed.
> a cultural wasteland full of ignorant, illiterate , xenophebic bigots who are the descendants of the worst people Europe had on offer
-1 Flamebait
Agreed. It was a little over the top. Let me revise the word 'full' to 3/4 full.
My own country is not much different BTW.
Jeez. Isn't there any moderator out there willing to take this to 0? Doesn't anyone read past the first 25 comments? Agreed again. And no, most people don't read past the first 5 comments.
While what you say is partly true, there ARE indeed still portions of China that are agrihicultural and this is a problem in terms of building popular government and capitalism. Something similar to what Germany did in the mid 1800s and what Russia did in the first half of the 1900s are required before China can develop fully. But they're already on their way. Correct. They need to develop manufacturing and utility infrastructure in rural areas. Rural dissent is becoming a major social and political problem.
As for your gold-rush, I think we'll find that it will become a decreasingly geographic affair. With high speed data communications, I belive that location of programmers will become virtually irrelevant. Agreed. However, I believe that the first transition to the 'corporate state' surpassing the nation state is that China (and Vietnam, India and South America) will first become wealthy first world countries as 'Nations'. Once this is done, corporate entities will then have a consistent global economic environment/framework. This will then give them the impetus they need to surpass national governments in terms of wealth and power.
At that point, you are correct, it will be irrelevant where you are or what your nationality is.
It's rare that I reply to Anonymous Cowards, but it's a slow afternoon....
After living in other countries I can say that the people of the US when compared to other countries are very tolerant towards other cultures. Horsesh*t.
Sure there is a race riot every now and then. Well that's ok then... how about the lynchings of black people. Been many of them lately?
But look at other parts of the world. In most parts of the world there is bloodshed over things like religion and politics. Yes, and much of that bloodshed is sponsored by the US.
Look at the 2000 election. How many other countries would have erupted in Anarchy given a similar situation. Very few. And by the same token, how many countries are as apathetic when it comes to being conned by an illegal election, and then defrauded into accepting a police state. At the beginning of this century, a great number. But the rest of the world has access to information now.
One can also look at 9/11 most countries would have faltered and capitulated. The US handled the situation and moved forward.
Many countries citizens would have asked why it happened and who was responsible. I mean, who trained these people, who funded them, who had the most to gain from committing this act. Certainly not Osama Bin Laden.
Manipulated when your emotions were high, you were swept up in nationalist hysteria, and allowed the most unpopular, unsupported president (and the string-pullers behind him) to pass an act which basically throws the one asset your country has (the American constitution) completely out the window and gives dozens of agencies eg ATF, FBI, NSA, DEA, FBI, PD, FEMA, CDC and of course, the Center for Interfering Anywhere an open licence to create and maintain a police state for the benefit of a small select number of people.
If you think the US is really all that bad. Then go live in another country.
Ha ha ha ha. Only an idiotic American would immediately assume that everyone who posts here is also an American. I do live in another country, and I count my blessings for that fact each day.
After all there are plenty of people I have met over seas that would love to have a chance to live in America.
That's probably because they bought the Hollywood Hype, but have never actually been there. When they arrive they realise that they have come to a cultural wasteland full of ignorant, illiterate , xenophebic bigots who are the descendants of the worst people Europe had on offer, and were glad to get rid off (and would happily give you some more).
Caveat. I've met many intelligent, well educated, and compassionate Americans. Just not in America.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
My guess is not. I give the non-military US software industry another five years before it basically becomes 5/6th in the world.
Interesting software opportunities after that will be almost entirely in the military, who won't outsource to India or China for the obvious reasons.
Even though the US has many of the most advanced weapon systems in the world (with the exception of submarines), the US is declining into recession.
And former world powers who decline into recession tend to become agressive and militant, so the poor people have someone to blame for their poverty other than the capitalists and politicians who have been stealing from them for years. (Yes, you're not poor because we have been paying you $5 an hour for 15 years, it's because of muslims and terrorists who are attacking our way of life.)
If you are a software developer in the US, see what you can do towards getting a security clearance. Because the software development opportunities are going to move into security (three letter agencies) and the military.
If you are not a US citizen, you might want to think about work opportunities at home, to avoid the inevitable 'witch-hunt' that the last ~400 years of American history has shown to be an inevitability.
Disclaimer: IANAROC (I am Not A Resident Of China)
I just took one of those fancy "heres how the other half lives" college courses.
Yes, thank-you for sharing with us how ignorant the American education system leaves you.
How will reducing software licensing costs transform china in 30 years, when its been an agrarian society for thousands, and poverty stricken for a couple hundred, at least ?
First of all, while my ancestors (the celts) were still painting their faces and living in thatch huts (yours too if you are anglo-saxon descended), the Chinese had already developed the most effecient system of agriculture on the planet, mining and metalurgy, astronomy and mathematics, gunpowder and rocketery, government beauracracy, silk clothing, medicine and hygeine shall I go on?
Secondly, if you have ever been to China (and I have three times and have lived in Hong Kong for a year), you would realise that the Chinese ALREADY have the social and cultural structure to adapt to science, engineering and technology extremely quickly. If you visit Taiwan or Hong Kong you can see this first hand.
The only three things holding back the Peoples Republic of China in becoming a "first world", technologically advanced country is
(a) restricted access to information due to govt. policies
(b) lack of commercial and government transparency in financial transactions
and (c) lack of infrastructure development outside of the major cities.
If these three problems can be solved in the next five years, then within twenty years China will be the most technologically advanced and wealthiest nation on earth. Actually, the nation state is fading as a power, so perhaps I should say Chinese corporations will be the most technologically advanced and the wealthiest on Earth.
Now to address the original point, the Internet is one of the most tranformative technologies developed for 200 years. Equivalent to the development of the printing press. Used the right way, it has the potential to transform society as we know it.
In order to access the internet, you need a computer with a modem, an operating system that makes it easy to connect to the internet and an e-mail client and browser. Linux is an OS perfectly suitable for these requirements.
If you are a developing country, you need access to these resources as cheaply as possible, and paying the Microsoft tax does not meet that criteria.
Almost half the cheap motherboard manufacturers are now in Southern China around ShenZhen. All but two CPU foundries are in Taiwan. The only resource that China doesn't have immediate cheap access to is CPU design.
However, the majority graduates from American universities with the capability to work on CPU design are Indian or Chinese. When China's govt. begins to relax it's authoritarian grip, and the middle class in the cities become wealthy, these graduates will return home and begin work for Chinese companies working on designing consumer grade CPUs. China already leads the world in super-conductor research.
At this point, Chinese consumers and companies will have direct access to cheap hardware, and the best, most robust software in the world FREE! The take-up of computing technology will accelerate past the West.
Then, once there are ~500 million active users, Chinese software companies will be able to create incredible software, and sell it over the Internet. Even if they only make US$1 per sale, each title will make them hundreds of millions of dollars.
This will spur the creation of a software 'gold-rush'. Software development will explode in every conceivable area and for every conceivable application. Transport, manufacturing, government, business management, distribution, mining etc etc.
This software 'gold-rush' will in turn tranform every other aspect of China's commercial and productive development.
If you want to see 'Old China', I suggest you go now. Because in twenty years, there will be nothing left of it.
I buy every loki game, even if it's not my type or sucks. and I make sure that I buy linux distros. in fact I gave away 4 copies of SuSE this christmas. with a card that gave the reciever of the gift 10 hours of my time as technical help.
Excellent! I've often wanted to make donations to Open Source projects as well, but they all seem only to take PayPal, a company I will NOT deal with under ANY circumstances.
so I'm also voting with my time. of the 4, 3 installed it, 2 use is regulary, and 1 has asked me how they can use their windows hard drive space for linux.... that person will be a total convert to the linux side within 30 days. and the one that hasn't installed it yet.... I'm waiting for them to aske me to install it for them...I was there for the other 3, but I made them do it and their response was, "wow that wasn't too bad"
This is absolutely fantastic. Have any of them asked you 'How do I open word documents/excel spreadsheets?' ? That's the only question I couldn't really answer, everything else is easy under KDE. And yesterday I took my first look at the 'liquid' theme from Mosfet and it is DELICIOUS! It certainly beats the crap out of the MS desktop.
Now to find three suitable candidates to introduce to the delights of Linux/KDE
1. Laws are rarely enforced at the "never" end of the scale, unless they've become completely defunct (such as laws regarding placement of hitching posts for horses in modern cities). Instead, they're enforced selectively against people that are thorns in the side of the current power base. Selective justice is often injustice. Though people often flaunt 'stupid' laws, they do so at their own risk.
Good point. Take drink driving/speeding (laws I happen to agree with). When they were first introduced, most people didn't change their behaviour. But once the RBTs got out in force, plus speed cameras, and the govt. got serious about it, then slowly behaviour changed.
However, censorship laws are different. They are like laws about prostitution.
Prostitution has been illegal (except recently changed in NSW) for decades, and yet Australia has one of the highest brothel per capita ratios in the Western world. Higher than France, Britain and the US.
Basically it was all 'hush-hush, nudge nudge, wink wink', but it was very rare for a brothel to be raided or prostitutes arrested, let only charged. It was just considered 'one of those things'. The police knew where they were (or are), but don't take action, because 3 more will pop up overnight if they close one down.
Now put thousands of internet cafes in that context, where people can surf 'censored material' and upload it to servers in the 'free world'. Then the law becomes irrelevant. The Govt. pats itself on the back for 'saving the children' and everyone else goes on as before.
I've long wondered why it is that people haven't slapped their politicians around until they understand that it is not necessarily their job to keep passing more and more laws. Sometimes, effectiveness and "good government" could be equally measured by the review of and quite possibly repeal of existing laws that do NOT serve the public good.
I think it's a power issue. Politicians don't feel powerful repealing laws (unless those laws REALLY suck, and they become the people's hero for doing so). The power rush comes from telling people WHAT TO DO. Giving people any kind of freedom EMPOWERS them, the last thing a politician wants to do for his serfs...er I mean constituents.
I used to think I would like to live in Australia one day. I liked the idea of traveling there sometime and visiting to see all of the unique things that Australia has to offer. Now I believe that I will stay here in the United States. No matter how frustrated I get over the things that our money grubbing polititians do, I have only to look "down under" to see a government that is full of raving lunatics.
Well.... not quite right, but go ahead and jump right to conclusions.....
What most people seem to misunderstand about Australia is that while our politicians are very keen on making laws, enforcing those laws in another thing altogether.
Australians on average don't tend to be very law abiding, and they have very little respect for authority. And so most laws are only ever introduced to be used as political weapons by the various factions in our Government. Citizens go right on doing pretty much what they were doing before the laws came into place.
Having said that, over the last ten years this has started to change, as our Government and other institutions have been almost completely infiltrated by the CIA and other US interests.
So the next time you have a go at OZ for passing a stupid law, remember that it was probably done at the bequest of the US, so they could test the waters before introducing it in YOUR country.
It is true that $100,000 isn't that much if you are just going to implement the same thing anyway. My statement about it being a hard sell was more a reference to this line of thinking, which I don't particularly agree with: "every operating system comes with a file system for free, and most operating systems are (nearly) free, but you want me to pay $XXXXX for only part of an operating system? You are nuts!"
I believe you would need to sell it as a document/information management system. Of course, for the $100K you could develop your own really neat system in-house (assuming competent developers), and tailor it specifically to your organisation's needs/structure.
But I imagine a $100,000+ filesystem must be a hard sell. (Of course, it could cost less or much more than that, depending on the server you install it on).
Have you priced this or are you just guessing? $100K isn't actually all that much compared to the amount of developer time to build something similar.
The problem with Oracle is that it's hard to get any kind of pricing structure out of them, tiered or otherwise.
It sounds an interesting idea, but it's not clear what you hope to gain from having the data in a relational database.
A file and it's associated details is an atomic, with only one relation, it's parent directory. A relational database doesn't provide much advantage over say an xBase implementation. There are some incredibly fast implementations (like Codebase from Sequiter)
This will provide lightning fast lookups of files whose names are indexed.
On the other hand, if you were going to add some additional functionality to your 'filesystem database', such as the ability to make usefull links and associations, like 'see also' or 'see related documents' or 'see documents by this author', then a relational database is just the trick as you can make 'many to many' joins between the various files on your network. Add a simple Web interface and voila! you have a really neat way of navigating through the filesystem.
Another cool thing would be some kind of 'system monitor' that notes changes to important files on servers and the like. While there are third-party tools that do this, you can really customise it if you build it yourself.
And of course, there is the ability to add notes, web links, references etc in each file's db record. This can speed up decision making on whether to look at a document or not.
And lastly, you can index the text inside the documents for really fast text searches that return document references. Again, there are third party tools that already do this, but most of them are proprietery.
The major problem you will face is 'currency'. That is, how often do the update scripts run? Once a day? Then you can't search for documents created this morning. Once every ten minutes? Then you chew up bandwith and CPU slowing down the servers and the network.
And of course if one of the servers goes down just before you run the scripts, then you lose the info for that day.
It would be good if you could build some kind of 'hook' in the 'writefile API' that triggers some kind of event or signal for your script/whatever to add the file details to the database 'realtime'. But I have no idea how that could be done.
What's more important here is the bigger picture of the 'new world order'. A world under the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, or some such bullshit rhetoric.
The United States Govt has been pushing for a world government, presumably with the US as it's head of state. What will be interesting to see is if this 'rule of law' is something that also applies to the United States and it's Korporations, or whether it is something that will be imposed by force on the rest of the world by the US, while the new 'Rome' remains exempt.
After all, intelligent well informed people did wonder when the 'war on terrorism', including 'any nation that trains or harbours terrorists' was going to extend to the CIA and US military, who have trained and harboured more genocidal despots and 'counter revolutionary' terrorists than any other nation on earth.
But no, it seems there is a double standard. It's OK for the US to train 'freedom fighters', but piss-poor nations can have the shit bombed out of them for harbouring 'terrorists' (ironically, the same people!)
So now we get to see if the double standard also applies to the rule of law. Will a US Korporation even ACCEPT or COMPLY to a ruling of an Australian court, or will you start bombing Australia as well?
Personally, I don't like the idea of a world government, but what is more frightening is the idea of a world government that is completely above the law.
OK, here's a couple of things I've learned in ~5 years of consulting.
1. Establish a beginning to end process. I cannot stress enough how important this is. All of your clients will be clueless about software development, and a little nervous heading into areas they know nothing about.
When you come in and say...
"Well, first we do this, then we do this, then we check here, build here, test here, sign-off here etc etc"
... the client relaxes, because it sounds like you know what you are doing, even if s/he doesn't.
2. Never make the client look like a fool.
As tempting as this is, because you meet some monumental morons (often with million dollar budgets). The key is to maneuveur is such a way that the client takes the credit for all your good ideas. Obviously, you need to gauge the level of incompetence/stupidity of your client and raise your rates accordingly.
3. Never be afraid to pass on a job.
There are great gigs, and there are gigs that will break your heart and send you bankrupt. Don't ever think that you can raise the client's competence in business, it just wont happen. If the project is a bad idea, with an impossible deadline, leave it for some other sucker.
4. Document every change and meeting.
After every meeting with the client(s), write up the important points, especially any changes, and send that e-mail/memo/whatever to the client and ask if you have all the main points, or is there anything else.
This is 'feature-creep' insurance for those times when irresponsible middle-managers in large organisations get a 'please-explain' from their boss and then try and blame you.
Then you politely and calmly pull out your documentation, and ask 'Which features would you like to cut?'
5. Don't forget to feel worthy.
Computer programming is one of the most difficult jobs on planet earth, and there are very few people who are any good at it. Don't be fooled by claims that there are 100 people who can replace you. If you are any good, that's just not true.
So set your rates accordingly. You deserve the rewards that come from hard work. That's why they don't pay filing clerks very much. Anyone can do it. Good programmers should command top dollar.
6. Don't hide anything from the client.
Remember to mention all the 'other' costs of software like implemenation/rollout, training and documentation. And mention them in the first meeting. Make it part of your process (see item 1).
7. Have fun!
I love both consulting and programming. If I wasn't married with kiddie, I'd spend most of my hours on it. And if your client has a major issue with you enjoying yourself, FIND A BETTER CLIENT!!
You are fucking prophet, aren't you ?
You are a trolling aren't you? On what historical evidence are you basing this "extended forecast" ?
Honda v Harley Davidson
Toyota (et all) v Ford, General Motors
Methods of long-term trend analysis made popular by Naisbitt et al
I would extend myself and give you a long explanation, but your outburst makes you sound like an ignorant asshole, so I won't.
Apple took 'regions' (something MS gui's STILL don't do), icons and menus from Xerox labs. But the clipboard was developed at Apple.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
and move up and fads start from the top and move down (and die quickly).
Instead of getting angry, you should be cheering. Every time MS does something like this, they weaken their position, and strengthen the position of open-source.
I TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY disagree with Eric Raymond when he says that OS/Linux/BSD/FSF efforts should be directed at Fortune 500 companies. This silly ego-stroking is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
Open Source should really be targeting SME's (Small to Medium Enterprises) because the cost and most importantly QUALITY of the software will give SMEs a competitive advantage in the market place.
This will allow them to slowly capture market share from Fortune 500 companies, who will realise 5-10 years too late then go into panic mode, like they did with "Quality Systems" after poor little third-world Japan started kicking their asses.
At this point they will either ditch their relationship with MS, or hold on to their proprietary solutions until they go bankrupt. At that point, their employees with find jobs with the former SMEs who are now Open Source/Linux/BSD/*nix shops.
If you compete over the higher ground, the ones who got there first will beat you. But if you control all of the lower-ground, those on the higher ground will have nowhere to go. Then they will surrender.
Keep hacking,
Ian
Slashdot Mirror
It is beyond me how you find anything racist in this. Allow me to clarify: Something isn't racist just because it deals with racial issues - it must also discriminate. Stating the obvious facts that people mix more today than they used to, and that this will create a more homogenous world population is in no way racist.
OK, I may have posted before I calmed down, but suggesting that single-race genetic pools are better for evolution than mixed race genetic-pools sounds racist to me.
Even the suggestion that there will be a uniform mixing of genes for the entire world population is utter nonsense.
There are at least 7 major gene pools, "white", african, arabic/Indian , han/mongolian, south-asian, melanesian, polynesian, inuit/native american plus hundreds if not thousands of sub-variations.
To suggest that all of these gene pools will be uniformly mixed into one 'slightly brown homo-sapien' anytime soon is so absurd that it can only be a 'red herring' to distract from the real meme of the article. ie. English people marrying blacks and Indians is retarting evolution.
No, no, no. As is widely known - and described in an earlier post - succes does *not* result in more kids. Quite the opposite actually. Those who don't win the nobel-prize or run a multi-billion company tend to produce more offspring instead, put bruntly. So we actually have a selection towards the lower end of the spectre.
I think you missed my point. Currently FINANCIAL OR WORDLY success does not lead to more children. I was talking about evolutionary leap in the strength of the immune system. It is my contention that this type of change would lead to having more children.
Remember, it is only recently that there is a correlation between financial success and less children. When the US was first settled, the wealthy had as many children as the poor. And they had a much better survival ratio too.
Let me get this straight: In Shanghai or Calcutta, a vicious variation of the common cold is contained completely from the rest of the world, and if it ever leaks out 99% of us are doomed because we have weakened resistances?
No, that's not what I said. I was trying to imply that those people with a stronger immune system will have many advantages because of their increased resistance to the ONE REMAINING THREAT TO HUMAN LIFE. We've killed nearly all the dangerous animals. In the industrialised world we have eliminated the mosquito threat. We've cleaned, poisoned and sterilized our environment so that the chances of any bacteria remaining are miniscule.
The only remaining threat to the industrialised world is catching diseases from other humans. And my point about cold-strains is that threat becomes greater each year. And it doesn't necessarily have to kill you. If your office colleague comes back from Shanghai, and spreads the latest strain of Shanghai flu through the office, and it knocks each person out of productive work for say, four weeks, then the person whose immune system is strong enough to resist the flu will become four weeks more productive than the rest of the office.
Even better, the office will be free from the usual distractions while half the people are home sick, and so they may even become eight weeks more productive.
Additionally, they wont infect their children with the flu, thus giving their children a four week learning advantage at school.
Plus, they won't need to pay for a Doctor's consultation, medicine, cough lollies etc etc.
If this happens every year, or even twice a year, over the period of a lifetime, these people will gain a huge advantage, which it is my contention will translate into evolutionary change.
I suppose it's just dumb luck that none of the thousands of europeans and americans who visit these places every year, haven't caught this deadly flu yet? Of course not.
I know you were trying to be funny, but you are completely wrong. Shanghai flu has spread through populations in London, Chicago and IIRC Paris. Now, did it wipe out the population? Of course not. Did it put a massive strain on the health system, interupt productive work and cause weeks of bed-ridden suffering for hundreds of people, absolutely!
This is not only total nonsense, it is state sponsored racism.
....
Take this for example
In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change. This increased mixing can be gauged by calculating the number of miles between a person's birthplace and his or her partner's, then between their parents' birthplaces, and finally, between their grandparents'.
In virtually every case, you will find that the number of miles drops dramatically the more that you head back into the past. Now people are going to universities and colleges where they meet and marry people from other continents. A generation ago, men and women rarely mated with anyone from a different town or city. Hence, the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population. Apart from that, there will be little change in the species.
Not only is this totally racist and white supremist horseshit, it is completely wrong.
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
Evolution works by trying combinations. When one particular combination hits exactly right for the current conditions at the current moment in time the result is a sudden and exponential success.
For example, let's imagine, that a certain blend of genes, from mixing certain groups of people who individually have strong immunity to different types of disease, produces children with an immune system that is 1-3 orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else.
These children will almost never get sick. Their brain development will be on average, much better, because they are never weakened by childhood diseases.
As they get older, they never visit conventional doctors, work harder and longer than the rest of the population without succumbing to the hundreds of different bacteria and virii that puts the rest of the population out of productive work 1-4 weeks of the year.
They will be less of a drain on society, as people in modern society are a much greater burden on the public purse at the end of their life (in Western Socialist countries, up to 50% of public health care is spent on the last 5 years of people's lives).
They will be productive for longer, creating wealth to a much greater age.
And with all this greater health, and wealth, and energy, they will produce A LOT MORE CHILDREN than the average person.
Modern medicine knows no cure for the COMMON COLD!! How many more diseases are we completely at a loss to stop right now?? Can you imagine a cold strain escaping from Shanghai, or Calcutta?
The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth.
Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains.
This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
Regarding 3) - this of course also has the downside that some companies tend to hire people who are technically unqualified for the job, but are better smoothtalkers than the guy actually able to do the job.....
Yes, this is a problem that I have witnessed myself. If the 'smooth talker' is the only person they hire, then it usually takes about 6 months before the employer figures it out.
OTOH, if there are technically competent people there, it soon becomes apparent that the 'smooth talker' is all talk and no substance. Then they usually last to the next paycheck.
This is why it's important to involve current IT people in the hiring process, OR, to design the system and set milestones for the person to achieve.
Hello,
I was planning to move into Linux development, and Kylix seemed to be the best available development environment for doing so. However, having reviewed your software license I have come to the conclusion that agreeing to such a license would not be a sound business decision.
Specifically,
==
12. AUDIT. During the term of this License and for one(1) year thereafter, upon reasonable notice and during normal business hours, Borland or its outside auditors will have the right to
enter your premises and access your records and computer systems to verify that you have paid to Borland the correct amounts owed under this License and determine whether the Products are being used inaccordance with the terms of this License. You willprovide reasonable assistance to Borland in connectionwith this provision. You agree to pay the cost of the audit if any underpayments during the period covered by theaudit amount to more than five percent (5%) of the fees actually owed for that period.
==
Of course, agreeing to disrupt productive work while you conduct your audit would cost my company far more than the original product licenses and so is an additional cost of using your software, one which cannot be justified.
However, if you were to agree to pay for the cost of disruption to my business of your intrusive audit, then perhaps there is room for negotiation.
Secondly, granting you the highest level of security access to our network would represent an unacceptable security breach. I sure you can understand that as your license terms implies that I am engaging in criminal activities, I must accord your company the same respect. To resolve this matter of trust, you could agree to allow my company access to your entire financial records, including bank account details, as a condition of presenting my cheque, being payment of said software license. If you would allow my company access to your financial records and bank account details, then we could certainly allow you access to our network.
Additionally,
==
14.4 No Jury Trials; No Joinder. Each party hereby irrevocably waives its right to a jury trial in any legal action, suit or proceeding between the parties arising out of or relating to this License. A copy this License may be filed with the court as written consent by both parties to a bench trial. You agree that any dispute you may have against Borland cannot be joined with any dispute of any other person or entity in a lawsuit, arbitration or any other proceeding, or resolved on a classwide basis.
==
While I have no intention of ever taking Borland to court, or joining a class action against them, it is preposterous to ask that I would waive any rights accorded to me by the Constitution or Common Law of the country I live in. Furthermore, it may in fact be impossible to waive such rights under the current laws anyway.
This clause implies a contempt of your customers that is totally unwarranted. It is insulting, and it reflects poorly on the character of the managers and directors of Borland. It certainly does not represent a company that I would wish to do business, or form a long term working relationship with.
It is my sincere hope that this license is a temporary oversight of a loyal but overzealous Borland employee, and that you are taking steps to remedy this situation before the consequences of this takes a toll on your companies sales and profitability.
I've noticed that it's governments, more than any other institution or demographic, that seem to latch on to Linux the most (witness adoptions in Scandinavian countries, the NSA in the States, China and so on). However, most distributions don't specifically target government at all; they generally either go after the serious Linux user or try to focus on user-friendliess (Corel and Mandrake, as examples).
This is an excellent observation, to which I would add that in my country, and other countries I have visited around the world, governments are not very well funded. And because of this, they often do a very poor job. Making the various levels of government more effecient would be of great benefit in many countries in the world. Unfortunately, many local governments have old PC's and no money for software licenses.
Enter Linux....
Most of the operating system and tools are free, and it can be parred down to run on older equipment. I have worked with small government departments and also volunteer organisations, and the thing that really breaks the bank is per-seat server licensing.
This is where linux really shines. Set up a mail/web/print server using a cheap PC, and you have taken the first step to moving the whole shop over to Linux.
Another thing is that in many of these small organisations, they use their PCs for very a specific purpose, like managing a single database. And so the question of Word, Excel, Access never comes up. Oftentimes, the people I meet in these small organisations have never used these applications, because they couldn't afford to purchase them.
Sometimes there was some 20yr old DOS programme running and they were happily using that to do their day to day work. Port that to ncurses and away you go. No gnashing of teeth about desktops and applications, just cheaper hardware and software so they can remain employed.
What if focusing on government demands was the answer? Ask them what they want, or develop with government needs (security, administration, etc.) in mind. If you do it right it shouldn't be hard to convince a government, be it municipal, provincial/state or maybe even national, that it's in their best interest to use a very cheap OS with few security holes and entertainment-based distractions (as much as we love Solitaire).
I think you are on to something here. I am going to look into it straight away. Local governments here are keen to improve, but are cash strapped. Picking specific applications for use in local government might be a good way to get Linux in.
The day that every motherboard's BIOS uses strong crypto to demand the master boot record be signed with a secret key known only to Microsoft is the day that Linux becomes a thing of the past.)
Not going to happen, unless the US goes to war with China. Most MoBos are made in Taiwan or Southern China, and you can bet your sweet lilly that the Chinese government (or the Japanese for that matter) is NOT going to give MS the power over every PC in China (or Japan).
So in the free world, you will always be able to buy a free and open PC. In the US, well it might go as you say, but hey, that's only the US.
The big money over the next decade will be in transforming the computer into an entertainment device.
Well, that's ONE of the things the computer will become, but the computer is evolving and transforming in a lot of other areas as well. Robotics, niche-manufacturing, traditional manufacturing , astro-physics, bio-technology, precision guided weapons/war machinery, virtual robotic control, communications, aerospace and fluid dynamics, chemistry and molecular design.
To say that the basic use of the computer will become to titilate the masses is IMHO limited thinking. Sure, there will always be a market for consumer devices, and content that plays on them, but to extend that to Microsoft taking over the BIOS of every computer made is just plain silly.
Perhaps there will be a fork in PC manufacturing. There will be a consumer device made which will basically be a PC with an idiot interface that makes it look like it's not a computer (hey, didn't Apple do that like, 18 years ago), and then there will be high-end, high performance "Workstations" made for academic, scientific and industrial/commercial applications.
Because I doubt that NASA are going to be using C# and Windows to build life-support/mission critical software on the next Space Shuttle or International Space Station.
I went to the site and they mention the 'Gorm Interface Builder' and the 'Project Center'. Are these two apps the equivelent of 'Project Builder' and 'Interface Builder' on OS X??
What would be really cool is to have the OpenStep API's and the Project Builder for creating apps in ObjC.
Your Uncle has a very good chance if he concentrates on a couple of things. I have years of experience, but no formal CS qualifications, and I have found I can always get work by following these guidelines.
1) Don't be desperate. In fact, be a little aloof.
2) Pick your companies carefully.
3) People skills will take you ten times further than technical skills. I've seen companies hire 'virtual savants' who were coding geniuses, but who couldn't work with others, were poor communicators and poor listeners and as a result the project fails.
Your Uncle needs to bring all his people skills from half a lifetime of experience to bear in the interview. You would be amazed at the look of relief that software project managers show when they meet someone who will listen carefully to the problems the company is trying to solve.
4) When asked, always steer the conversation to projects you have successfully completed and not particular skills in particular areas. Believe it or not, most companies don't want a walking encyclopedia, they want someone who will work at getting the project completed on time.
5) Provide references of ability to learn quickly. Not only is the tech industry changing rapidly, thus requiring those who can self-teach themselves new technologies, but the company will be interested in how fast you grasp the problems faced in their specific industry/company. After all, the reason SME's develop software in the first place is to gain a competitive advantage through one of their industry's 'hard tasks'.
6) Do some research. Not on the company, but on the industry they are in. This will allow you to ask intelligent questions in the interview.
7) Become interested in the project during the interview. Act as if their problem/project is an interesting foreign land to be explored (and possibly plundered). Interviewers look for those who are first motivated by the technical challenge, with the money just being a measure of success.
8) DON'T PANIC! Focus on your experience, your proven ability, your communication skills and your proven ability to learn. Those are four things that companies (with exception of behomoths) are looking for in every candidate. If a company uses clueless HR staff who only hire those who look good on paper, then I can guarantee you, you do NOT want to work for those life sucking, soul destroying beauracrats.
9) Employment agents are 90% morons. As a rule, I don't deal with them. I network. I call people, who know people, who know people. Once I had been doing that for a few years, people started to call me, because they knew my work ethic and my reputation for getting projects completed.
> a cultural wasteland full of ignorant, illiterate , xenophebic bigots who are the descendants of the worst people Europe had on offer
-1 Flamebait
Agreed. It was a little over the top. Let me revise the word 'full' to 3/4 full.
My own country is not much different BTW.
Jeez. Isn't there any moderator out there willing to take this to 0? Doesn't anyone read past the first 25 comments?
Agreed again. And no, most people don't read past the first 5 comments.
While what you say is partly true, there ARE indeed still portions of China that are agrihicultural and this is a problem in terms of building popular government and capitalism. Something similar to what Germany did in the mid 1800s and what Russia did in the first half of the 1900s are required before China can develop fully. But they're already on their way.
Correct. They need to develop manufacturing and utility infrastructure in rural areas. Rural dissent is becoming a major social and political problem.
As for your gold-rush, I think we'll find that it will become a decreasingly geographic affair. With high speed data communications, I belive that location of programmers will become virtually irrelevant.
Agreed. However, I believe that the first transition to the 'corporate state' surpassing the nation state is that China (and Vietnam, India and South America) will first become wealthy first world countries as 'Nations'. Once this is done, corporate entities will then have a consistent global economic environment/framework. This will then give them the impetus they need to surpass national governments in terms of wealth and power.
At that point, you are correct, it will be irrelevant where you are or what your nationality is.
It's rare that I reply to Anonymous Cowards, but it's a slow afternoon....
After living in other countries I can say that the people of the US when compared to other countries are very tolerant towards other cultures.
Horsesh*t.
Sure there is a race riot every now and then.
Well that's ok then... how about the lynchings of black people. Been many of them lately?
But look at other parts of the world. In most parts of the world there is bloodshed over things like religion and politics.
Yes, and much of that bloodshed is sponsored by the US.
Look at the 2000 election. How many other countries would have erupted in Anarchy given a similar situation.
Very few. And by the same token, how many countries are as apathetic when it comes to being conned by an illegal election, and then defrauded into accepting a police state. At the beginning of this century, a great number. But the rest of the world has access to information now.
One can also look at 9/11 most countries would have faltered and capitulated. The US handled the situation and moved forward.
Many countries citizens would have asked why it happened and who was responsible. I mean, who trained these people, who funded them, who had the most to gain from committing this act. Certainly not Osama Bin Laden.
Manipulated when your emotions were high, you were swept up in nationalist hysteria, and allowed the most unpopular, unsupported president (and the string-pullers behind him) to pass an act which basically throws the one asset your country has (the American constitution) completely out the window and gives dozens of agencies eg ATF, FBI, NSA, DEA, FBI, PD, FEMA, CDC and of course, the Center for Interfering Anywhere an open licence to create and maintain a police state for the benefit of a small select number of people.
If you think the US is really all that bad. Then go live in another country.
Ha ha ha ha. Only an idiotic American would immediately assume that everyone who posts here is also an American. I do live in another country, and I count my blessings for that fact each day.
After all there are plenty of people I have met over seas that would love to have a chance to live in America.
That's probably because they bought the Hollywood Hype, but have never actually been there. When they arrive they realise that they have come to a cultural wasteland full of ignorant, illiterate , xenophebic bigots who are the descendants of the worst people Europe had on offer, and were glad to get rid off (and would happily give you some more).
Caveat.
I've met many intelligent, well educated, and compassionate Americans. Just not in America.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
My guess is not. I give the non-military US software industry another five years before it basically becomes 5/6th in the world.
Interesting software opportunities after that will be almost entirely in the military, who won't outsource to India or China for the obvious reasons.
Even though the US has many of the most advanced weapon systems in the world (with the exception of submarines), the US is declining into recession.
And former world powers who decline into recession tend to become agressive and militant, so the poor people have someone to blame for their poverty other than the capitalists and politicians who have been stealing from them for years. (Yes, you're not poor because we have been paying you $5 an hour for 15 years, it's because of muslims and terrorists who are attacking our way of life.)
If you are a software developer in the US, see what you can do towards getting a security clearance. Because the software development opportunities are going to move into security (three letter agencies) and the military.
If you are not a US citizen, you might want to think about work opportunities at home, to avoid the inevitable 'witch-hunt' that the last ~400 years of American history has shown to be an inevitability.
Disclaimer: IANAROC (I am Not A Resident Of China)
I just took one of those fancy "heres how the other half lives" college courses.
Yes, thank-you for sharing with us how ignorant the American education system leaves you.
How will reducing software licensing costs transform china in 30 years, when its been an agrarian society for thousands, and poverty stricken for a couple hundred, at least ?
First of all, while my ancestors (the celts) were still painting their faces and living in thatch huts (yours too if you are anglo-saxon descended), the Chinese had already developed the most effecient system of agriculture on the planet, mining and metalurgy, astronomy and mathematics, gunpowder and rocketery, government beauracracy, silk clothing, medicine and hygeine shall I go on?
Secondly, if you have ever been to China (and I have three times and have lived in Hong Kong for a year), you would realise that the Chinese ALREADY have the social and cultural structure to adapt to science, engineering and technology extremely quickly. If you visit Taiwan or Hong Kong you can see this first hand.
The only three things holding back the Peoples Republic of China in becoming a "first world", technologically advanced country is
(a) restricted access to information due to govt. policies
(b) lack of commercial and government transparency in financial transactions
and (c) lack of infrastructure development outside of the major cities.
If these three problems can be solved in the next five years, then within twenty years China will be the most technologically advanced and wealthiest nation on earth. Actually, the nation state is fading as a power, so perhaps I should say Chinese corporations will be the most technologically advanced and the wealthiest on Earth.
Now to address the original point, the Internet is one of the most tranformative technologies developed for 200 years. Equivalent to the development of the printing press. Used the right way, it has the potential to transform society as we know it.
In order to access the internet, you need a computer with a modem, an operating system that makes it easy to connect to the internet and an e-mail client and browser. Linux is an OS perfectly suitable for these requirements.
If you are a developing country, you need access to these resources as cheaply as possible, and paying the Microsoft tax does not meet that criteria.
Almost half the cheap motherboard manufacturers are now in Southern China around ShenZhen. All but two CPU foundries are in Taiwan. The only resource that China doesn't have immediate cheap access to is CPU design.
However, the majority graduates from American universities with the capability to work on CPU design are Indian or Chinese. When China's govt. begins to relax it's authoritarian grip, and the middle class in the cities become wealthy, these graduates will return home and begin work for Chinese companies working on designing consumer grade CPUs. China already leads the world in super-conductor research.
At this point, Chinese consumers and companies will have direct access to cheap hardware, and the best, most robust software in the world FREE! The take-up of computing technology will accelerate past the West.
Then, once there are ~500 million active users, Chinese software companies will be able to create incredible software, and sell it over the Internet. Even if they only make US$1 per sale, each title will make them hundreds of millions of dollars.
This will spur the creation of a software 'gold-rush'. Software development will explode in every conceivable area and for every conceivable application. Transport, manufacturing, government, business management, distribution, mining etc etc.
This software 'gold-rush' will in turn tranform every other aspect of China's commercial and productive development.
If you want to see 'Old China', I suggest you go now. Because in twenty years, there will be nothing left of it.
I buy every loki game, even if it's not my type or sucks. and I make sure that I buy linux distros. in fact I gave away 4 copies of SuSE this christmas. with a card that gave the reciever of the gift 10 hours of my time as technical help.
Excellent! I've often wanted to make donations to Open Source projects as well, but they all seem only to take PayPal, a company I will NOT deal with under ANY circumstances.
so I'm also voting with my time. of the 4, 3 installed it, 2 use is regulary, and 1 has asked me how they can use their windows hard drive space for linux.... that person will be a total convert to the linux side within 30 days. and the one that hasn't installed it yet.... I'm waiting for them to aske me to install it for them...I was there for the other 3, but I made them do it and their response was, "wow that wasn't too bad"
This is absolutely fantastic. Have any of them asked you 'How do I open word documents/excel spreadsheets?' ? That's the only question I couldn't really answer, everything else is easy under KDE. And yesterday I took my first look at the 'liquid' theme from Mosfet and it is DELICIOUS! It certainly beats the crap out of the MS desktop.
Now to find three suitable candidates to introduce to the delights of Linux/KDE
1. Laws are rarely enforced at the "never" end of the scale, unless they've become completely defunct (such as laws regarding placement of hitching posts for horses in modern cities). Instead, they're enforced selectively against people that are thorns in the side of the current power base. Selective justice is often injustice. Though people often flaunt 'stupid' laws, they do so at their own risk.
...er I mean constituents.
Good point. Take drink driving/speeding (laws I happen to agree with). When they were first introduced, most people didn't change their behaviour. But once the RBTs got out in force, plus speed cameras, and the govt. got serious about it, then slowly behaviour changed.
However, censorship laws are different. They are like laws about prostitution.
Prostitution has been illegal (except recently changed in NSW) for decades, and yet Australia has one of the highest brothel per capita ratios in the Western world. Higher than France, Britain and the US.
Basically it was all 'hush-hush, nudge nudge, wink wink', but it was very rare for a brothel to be raided or prostitutes arrested, let only charged. It was just considered 'one of those things'. The police knew where they were (or are), but don't take action, because 3 more will pop up overnight if they close one down.
Now put thousands of internet cafes in that context, where people can surf 'censored material' and upload it to servers in the 'free world'. Then the law becomes irrelevant. The Govt. pats itself on the back for 'saving the children' and everyone else goes on as before.
I've long wondered why it is that people haven't slapped their politicians around until they understand that it is not necessarily their job to keep passing more and more laws. Sometimes, effectiveness and "good government" could be equally measured by the review of and quite possibly repeal of existing laws that do NOT serve the public good.
I think it's a power issue. Politicians don't feel powerful repealing laws (unless those laws REALLY suck, and they become the people's hero for doing so). The power rush comes from telling people WHAT TO DO. Giving people any kind of freedom EMPOWERS them, the last thing a politician wants to do for his serfs
Going back to your roots huh ;) (as a convict colony of course)
We've never left our roots as a convict colony. Live here for ~30 years and you will see what I mean.
I used to think I would like to live in Australia one day. I liked the idea of traveling there sometime and visiting to see all of the unique things that Australia has to offer. Now I believe that I will stay here in the United States. No matter how frustrated I get over the things that our money grubbing polititians do, I have only to look "down under" to see a government that is full of raving lunatics.
Well.... not quite right, but go ahead and jump right to conclusions.....
What most people seem to misunderstand about Australia is that while our politicians are very keen on making laws, enforcing those laws in another thing altogether.
Australians on average don't tend to be very law abiding, and they have very little respect for authority. And so most laws are only ever introduced to be used as political weapons by the various factions in our Government. Citizens go right on doing pretty much what they were doing before the laws came into place.
Having said that, over the last ten years this has started to change, as our Government and other institutions have been almost completely infiltrated by the CIA and other US interests.
So the next time you have a go at OZ for passing a stupid law, remember that it was probably done at the bequest of the US, so they could test the waters before introducing it in YOUR country.
It is true that $100,000 isn't that much if you are just going to implement the same thing anyway. My statement about it being a hard sell was more a reference to this line of thinking, which I don't particularly agree with: "every operating system comes with a file system for free, and most operating systems are (nearly) free, but you want me to pay $XXXXX for only part of an operating system? You are nuts!"
I believe you would need to sell it as a document/information management system. Of course, for the $100K you could develop your own really neat system in-house (assuming competent developers), and tailor it specifically to your organisation's needs/structure.
But I imagine a $100,000+ filesystem must be a hard sell. (Of course, it could cost less or much more than that, depending on the server you install it on).
Have you priced this or are you just guessing? $100K isn't actually all that much compared to the amount of developer time to build something similar.
The problem with Oracle is that it's hard to get any kind of pricing structure out of them, tiered or otherwise.
It sounds an interesting idea, but it's not clear what you hope to gain from having the data in a relational database.
A file and it's associated details is an atomic, with only one relation, it's parent directory. A relational database doesn't provide much advantage over say an xBase implementation. There are some incredibly fast implementations (like Codebase from Sequiter)
This will provide lightning fast lookups of files whose names are indexed.
On the other hand, if you were going to add some additional functionality to your 'filesystem database', such as the ability to make usefull links and associations, like 'see also' or 'see related documents' or 'see documents by this author', then a relational database is just the trick as you can make 'many to many' joins between the various files on your network. Add a simple Web interface and voila! you have a really neat way of navigating through the filesystem.
Another cool thing would be some kind of 'system monitor' that notes changes to important files on servers and the like. While there are third-party tools that do this, you can really customise it if you build it yourself.
And of course, there is the ability to add notes, web links, references etc in each file's db record. This can speed up decision making on whether to look at a document or not.
And lastly, you can index the text inside the documents for really fast text searches that return document references. Again, there are third party tools that already do this, but most of them are proprietery.
The major problem you will face is 'currency'. That is, how often do the update scripts run? Once a day? Then you can't search for documents created this morning. Once every ten minutes? Then you chew up bandwith and CPU slowing down the servers and the network.
And of course if one of the servers goes down just before you run the scripts, then you lose the info for that day.
It would be good if you could build some kind of 'hook' in the 'writefile API' that triggers some kind of event or signal for your script/whatever to add the file details to the database 'realtime'. But I have no idea how that could be done.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
What's more important here is the bigger picture of the 'new world order'. A world under the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, or some such bullshit rhetoric.
The United States Govt has been pushing for a world government, presumably with the US as it's head of state. What will be interesting to see is if this 'rule of law' is something that also applies to the United States and it's Korporations, or whether it is something that will be imposed by force on the rest of the world by the US, while the new 'Rome' remains exempt.
After all, intelligent well informed people did wonder when the 'war on terrorism', including 'any nation that trains or harbours terrorists' was going to extend to the CIA and US military, who have trained and harboured more genocidal despots and 'counter revolutionary' terrorists than any other nation on earth.
But no, it seems there is a double standard. It's OK for the US to train 'freedom fighters', but piss-poor nations can have the shit bombed out of them for harbouring 'terrorists' (ironically, the same people!)
So now we get to see if the double standard also applies to the rule of law. Will a US Korporation even ACCEPT or COMPLY to a ruling of an Australian court, or will you start bombing Australia as well?
Personally, I don't like the idea of a world government, but what is more frightening is the idea of a world government that is completely above the law.
OK, here's a couple of things I've learned in ~5 years of consulting.
1. Establish a beginning to end process. I cannot stress enough how important this is. All of your clients will be clueless about software development, and a little nervous heading into areas they know nothing about.
When you come in and say...
"Well, first we do this, then we do this, then we check here, build here, test here, sign-off here etc etc"
... the client relaxes, because it sounds like you know what you are doing, even if s/he doesn't.
2. Never make the client look like a fool.
As tempting as this is, because you meet some monumental morons (often with million dollar budgets). The key is to maneuveur is such a way that the client takes the credit for all your good ideas. Obviously, you need to gauge the level of incompetence/stupidity of your client and raise your rates accordingly.
3. Never be afraid to pass on a job.
There are great gigs, and there are gigs that will break your heart and send you bankrupt. Don't ever think that you can raise the client's competence in business, it just wont happen. If the project is a bad idea, with an impossible deadline, leave it for some other sucker.
4. Document every change and meeting.
After every meeting with the client(s), write up the important points, especially any changes, and send that e-mail/memo/whatever to the client and ask if you have all the main points, or is there anything else.
This is 'feature-creep' insurance for those times when irresponsible middle-managers in large organisations get a 'please-explain' from their boss and then try and blame you.
Then you politely and calmly pull out your documentation, and ask 'Which features would you like to cut?'
5. Don't forget to feel worthy.
Computer programming is one of the most difficult jobs on planet earth, and there are very few people who are any good at it. Don't be fooled by claims that there are 100 people who can replace you. If you are any good, that's just not true.
So set your rates accordingly. You deserve the rewards that come from hard work. That's why they don't pay filing clerks very much. Anyone can do it. Good programmers should command top dollar.
6. Don't hide anything from the client.
Remember to mention all the 'other' costs of software like implemenation/rollout, training and documentation. And mention them in the first meeting. Make it part of your process (see item 1).
7. Have fun!
I love both consulting and programming. If I wasn't married with kiddie, I'd spend most of my hours on it. And if your client has a major issue with you enjoying yourself, FIND A BETTER CLIENT!!
You are fucking prophet, aren't you ?
You are a trolling aren't you?
On what historical evidence are you basing this "extended forecast" ?
Honda v Harley Davidson
Toyota (et all) v Ford, General Motors
Methods of long-term trend analysis made popular by Naisbitt et al
I would extend myself and give you a long explanation, but your outburst makes you sound like an ignorant asshole, so I won't.
Apple took 'regions' (something MS gui's STILL don't do), icons and menus from Xerox labs. But the clipboard was developed at Apple.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
and move up and fads start from the top and move down (and die quickly).
Instead of getting angry, you should be cheering. Every time MS does something like this, they weaken their position, and strengthen the position of open-source.
I TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY disagree with Eric Raymond when he says that OS/Linux/BSD/FSF efforts should be directed at Fortune 500 companies. This silly ego-stroking is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
Open Source should really be targeting SME's (Small to Medium Enterprises) because the cost and most importantly QUALITY of the software will give SMEs a competitive advantage in the market place.
This will allow them to slowly capture market share from Fortune 500 companies, who will realise 5-10 years too late then go into panic mode, like they did with "Quality Systems" after poor little third-world Japan started kicking their asses.
At this point they will either ditch their relationship with MS, or hold on to their proprietary solutions until they go bankrupt. At that point, their employees with find jobs with the former SMEs who are now Open Source/Linux/BSD/*nix shops.
If you compete over the higher ground, the ones who got there first will beat you. But if you control all of the lower-ground, those on the higher ground will have nowhere to go. Then they will surrender.
Keep hacking, Ian