Unfortunately the free account is linked to the IP address you register from. Only semi-useful to me. I like to read usenet at home and from work and schlep my newsrc file around between multiple machines and multiple copies of Agent. I could create multiple accounts I suppose, but I'd rather complain!
1) Flashing the BIOS 2) in a corporate environment, they're very useful when you're about to ghost a machine 3) initial stages of setting up dual boot to linux from windows:) 4) running partitionmagic 5) anytime you need to load something other than the OS that's already on the box
Yes, you might be able to use a CD or a USB device or even PXI boot for the above, but with older boxes, you still need the floppy.
More power to you for using vi, but that's completely irrelevent.
MS Word isn't popular because it's useful to the individual user or the home user market. It's MS's cash cow because it's useful to the corporate universe.
VBA and Group Policy templates are the main things that make it worthwhile to corpAmerica.
Yes, MS Word is a piece of crap, but Dvorak's article won't tell you why. He's using his patented "cranky guy" routine. Take a pill d00d.
Nobody in their right mind uses Word to create plain text files. You use Word to create Word docs and really that's it. It doesn't create HTML very well either. Absolutely true, but so what? That's not it's primary purpose either, and not a reason to scrap it.
I use OO at home, but it's not ready from prime-time. In a corporate environment, people use Word because you can automate it. VB/VBA is a security meltdown waiting to happen (thus the annoying "disable macros?" prompt), but it's the main reason for using MS Office in the first place -- you can programmatically get at the vast majority of the features of *all* the MSO apps using it. And you can suck data in from a variety of sources including SQL.
One thing he's right about is the annoyance of the MSI re-installing features over and over. Home user? Yeah absolutely, what a pain in the butt. Corporate User? Make the IT guy fix it:)
When nation $FOOnia sells a product or service to nation $BARistan, they get $BARistan money in exchange. Since the only place you can spend $BARistan money is $BARistan, the people of $FOOnia really have no choice but to turn around and buy something from $BARistan.
Employing people in other countries is simply an element of free trade between nations, and is a Good Thing, in the macro-economic sense, even if it means that you can no longer get a crappy consumer tech support job in the US.
The problem is that the money flows out of the US and away from the workers, into India and the transnationals that are doing the offshoring, and the money that does come back to the US doesn't come back to the people who lost it -- it goes to the people who have Big Things to sell like real estate. IOW the net effect is that some money flows to the top tier of the US economic cake while it flows away from everyone else.
The symptom of the problem is that hundreds and eventually thousands of people who were relying on those crappy tech support jobs to meet their car payments, rents, child support, whatever, are now forced to take a lower paying CRAPPIER job that doesn't meet those obligations. Those people fall through the cracks (bad for them) and onto unemployment or welfare rolls (bad for the US economy).
The only people who win in this scenario are the owners and major stockholders of the companies.
The Indians themselves have a window of about 10 or 15 years before the bottom drops out of *their* little dream. I don't resent them, they are as much pawns of the game as anybody who's lost their job to offshoring.
Unrestrained globalization is as bad an idea as unrestrained capitalism. The reactions to it are only getting warmed up. Expect more violent protests at WTO summits, not fewer. People all over the world feel threatened by it, and not without reason.
I didn't say it was "wrong". This really isn't a moral issue. And believe me, I know that my well-being is my own responsibility and no one else's. You don't have to (and obviously don't) relate to my particular circumstances. But telling me it's my problem (with the implication that it's just my personal issue) avoids the question and basically misses the point, since I'm not the only person with this concern.
"Think of something", huh? Thanks for nothin'.
What I want to know is: if computer techies (not just me) have to re-train for another industry -- because a lot of us will if capital decides en masse that offshoring is the best way to fill their technical needs -- which industry is going to fill the void?
AFAICT there's *nothing* on the horizon for white collar techies who get outsourced. And that is bad for the American economy in the medium and long terms. It's only good for the "American" companies who become de facto transnational corporations, in the short and medium terms -- in the long run they will lose their customer base if people can't afford to buy their products.
The Outsourced will, by and large, "think of something", because there are a lot of self-starters in this biz. But a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks, and end up on unemployment or flipping burgers. Wait and see. It's not going to be pretty. The resentment you're sensing now isn't going to peak for 3 or 4 years, when the offshored jobs are 10x today's numbers.
And in 10 or 15 years when India's standards (and wages) go up, where will the jobs move? Because the jobs *will* move to someplace cheaper. And just how glad for their new competitors will Indian techies be?
Supposedly anyone who kicks against outsourcing is against companies being profitable. I have no problem with companies being profitable.
What I have a problem with is the fact that I'm in my mid-40's and high up in the payscale for my particular niche. If my job got outsourced, I'd like to know what these profitable companies expect me to do for a living?
So far -- as the article points out -- all the executives can tell us is "Uh, think of something."
So forgive me if I don't cheer for India's (current) good fortune. Twenty years ago, when the manufacturing jobs began leaving the US, at least The Information Economy was on the rise, and most people managed to change gears.
Today there's nothing on the horizon unless you count flipping burgers. Uncool.
Great article. He laid the whole thing out in plain English. He didn't mention his Steely Dan fetish though, present from day one (bars named "The Gentleman Loser" and "The Western World", Klaus & the Rooster... Ahem.)
What Gibson did, his big cultural contribution, was portray computers and the people who know how to use them as *glamourous*. And he filled that world with dangerous, edgy people.
Instead of cute little nerds, a la movies of the time like "War Games" and "Short Circuit".
In Neuromancer, the underlying metaphor is "computers == really good drugs".
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately the free account is linked to the IP address you register from. Only semi-useful to me. I like to read usenet at home and from work and schlep my newsrc file around between multiple machines and multiple copies of Agent. I could create multiple accounts I suppose, but I'd rather complain!
Need em for:
:)
1) Flashing the BIOS
2) in a corporate environment, they're very useful when you're about to ghost a machine
3) initial stages of setting up dual boot to linux from windows
4) running partitionmagic
5) anytime you need to load something other than the OS that's already on the box
Yes, you might be able to use a CD or a USB device or even PXI boot for the above, but with older boxes, you still need the floppy.
More power to you for using vi, but that's completely irrelevent.
MS Word isn't popular because it's useful to the individual user or the home user market. It's MS's cash cow because it's useful to the corporate universe.
VBA and Group Policy templates are the main things that make it worthwhile to corpAmerica.
Nobody in their right mind uses Word to create plain text files. You use Word to create Word docs and really that's it. It doesn't create HTML very well either. Absolutely true, but so what? That's not it's primary purpose either, and not a reason to scrap it.
I use OO at home, but it's not ready from prime-time. In a corporate environment, people use Word because you can automate it. VB/VBA is a security meltdown waiting to happen (thus the annoying "disable macros?" prompt), but it's the main reason for using MS Office in the first place -- you can programmatically get at the vast majority of the features of *all* the MSO apps using it. And you can suck data in from a variety of sources including SQL.
One thing he's right about is the annoyance of the MSI re-installing features over and over. Home user? Yeah absolutely, what a pain in the butt. Corporate User? Make the IT guy fix it :)
When nation $FOOnia sells a product or service to nation $BARistan, they get $BARistan money in exchange. Since the only place you can spend $BARistan money is $BARistan, the people of $FOOnia really have no choice but to turn around and buy something from $BARistan.
Employing people in other countries is simply an element of free trade between nations, and is a Good Thing, in the macro-economic sense, even if it means that you can no longer get a crappy consumer tech support job in the US.
The problem is that the money flows out of the US and away from the workers, into India and the transnationals that are doing the offshoring, and the money that does come back to the US doesn't come back to the people who lost it -- it goes to the people who have Big Things to sell like real estate. IOW the net effect is that some money flows to the top tier of the US economic cake while it flows away from everyone else.
The symptom of the problem is that hundreds and eventually thousands of people who were relying on those crappy tech support jobs to meet their car payments, rents, child support, whatever, are now forced to take a lower paying CRAPPIER job that doesn't meet those obligations. Those people fall through the cracks (bad for them) and onto unemployment or welfare rolls (bad for the US economy).
The only people who win in this scenario are the owners and major stockholders of the companies.
The Indians themselves have a window of about 10 or 15 years before the bottom drops out of *their* little dream. I don't resent them, they are as much pawns of the game as anybody who's lost their job to offshoring.
Unrestrained globalization is as bad an idea as unrestrained capitalism. The reactions to it are only getting warmed up. Expect more violent protests at WTO summits, not fewer. People all over the world feel threatened by it, and not without reason.
I didn't say it was "wrong". This really isn't a moral issue. And believe me, I know that my well-being is my own responsibility and no one else's. You don't have to (and obviously don't) relate to my particular circumstances. But telling me it's my problem (with the implication that it's just my personal issue) avoids the question and basically misses the point, since I'm not the only person with this concern.
"Think of something", huh? Thanks for nothin'.
What I want to know is: if computer techies (not just me) have to re-train for another industry -- because a lot of us will if capital decides en masse that offshoring is the best way to fill their technical needs -- which industry is going to fill the void?
AFAICT there's *nothing* on the horizon for white collar techies who get outsourced. And that is bad for the American economy in the medium and long terms. It's only good for the "American" companies who become de facto transnational corporations, in the short and medium terms -- in the long run they will lose their customer base if people can't afford to buy their products.
The Outsourced will, by and large, "think of something", because there are a lot of self-starters in this biz. But a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks, and end up on unemployment or flipping burgers. Wait and see. It's not going to be pretty. The resentment you're sensing now isn't going to peak for 3 or 4 years, when the offshored jobs are 10x today's numbers.
And in 10 or 15 years when India's standards (and wages) go up, where will the jobs move? Because the jobs *will* move to someplace cheaper. And just how glad for their new competitors will Indian techies be?
Supposedly anyone who kicks against outsourcing is against companies being profitable. I have no problem with companies being profitable.
What I have a problem with is the fact that I'm in my mid-40's and high up in the payscale for my particular niche. If my job got outsourced, I'd like to know what these profitable companies expect me to do for a living?
So far -- as the article points out -- all the executives can tell us is "Uh, think of something."
So forgive me if I don't cheer for India's (current) good fortune. Twenty years ago, when the manufacturing jobs began leaving the US, at least The Information Economy was on the rise, and most people managed to change gears.
Today there's nothing on the horizon unless you count flipping burgers. Uncool.
WOOOSH!!! That joke went right over your head didn't it.
:)
Pretty much. I still don't get it, but that's all in the past now
Not true. "Gentleman Loser" is from the song 'Midnight Cruiser' back in 1972. "Here at the Western World" was written in 1976.
I know that Steely Dan had a big thing for science fiction though, so it *is* a nice match...
Great article. He laid the whole thing out in plain English. He didn't mention his Steely Dan fetish though, present from day one (bars named "The Gentleman Loser" and "The Western World", Klaus & the Rooster... Ahem.)
What Gibson did, his big cultural contribution, was portray computers and the people who know how to use them as *glamourous*. And he filled that world with dangerous, edgy people.
Instead of cute little nerds, a la movies of the time like "War Games" and "Short Circuit".
In Neuromancer, the underlying metaphor is "computers == really good drugs".
Get that mighty Zion dub boomin, mon...