Perhaps we would need to broaden the debate a little to distinguish between computer maintenance related activities and the need for most people to have local storage capabilities. It really brings into focus a couple of important elements. a. People would definitely and gladly give up the computing infrastructure maintenance especially if one is looking at savings in licensing costs, hardware obsolesence risks, smoother hardware/firmward/software upgrade paths and so on. Microsoft is weak here, unless of course they are able to move in that direction - remember M$ consumer products are really raking in the moolah these days. b. People are less likely (even your mother I would hazard a guess) to give up personal information, and other information such as documents abnd such like data to an ISP or any of that ilk. Think about the difficulties of changing service providers, it doesnt make sense. Here M$ is on much stronger ground but perhaps not for long because people would then only be interested in storage and there are definitely a number of players who can give the best of both worlds, storage which is local yet computing which is requestesd and used on demand.
What does the slashdot community think about bandwidth becoming like our electricity - generated on demand and ubiquitos?
As I read this rather interesting post, I am trying to figure out why Amazon took this route rather than the many many routes available to them to publicise or provide a richer experience to the average Joe buyer...
Even with a full text search facility I doubt very much if it can come close to matching the experience of flipping through a book at the local book store no matter how effective the searching facility.
I can think of one reason and that has already been mentioned by a few/.ers here i.e., the ability to help researchers to find out obscure stuff that wont find its way even into the google scheme of things but that is not a huge majority so I am left wondering.
Its surprising that this lament should come from the bastion of free wheeling businesses. At the end of the day, its about building a certain competitiveness that is sustainable. Clearly providing tech support at American wages wasnt sustainable and the positions had to move to India.
At the end of the day, customers hang up or have a bad experience because its a changing experience, but this is a learning system and soon as people on both sides begin understanding each other better, this will seen less often.
So I might not be so hard on the companies to say they dont care. Finally, and this is probably overlooked in most items that talk about jobs moving elsewhere is that the places to which these jobs go are themselves usually a potential high growth marketplace e.g., China and India and has the capacity to sustain huge volumes on its own in the not so distant future.
I am just curious here and therefore my question here must be seen in that context. In the case of the slammer worm and with various other virus related incidents, the victim has almost always been shrink wrapped, standard off-the-shelf products (even if one includes operating systems in this league). So the argument could go that product liability is inappropriate because here you were given a tool if you like and its up to you to do what you wanted with it. Yes I admit that fundamental flaws should not be present but I am not sure if I am on terra firma on that ground alone.
Anyway, now what about bespoke software of the kind that runs banking systems? Surely there is a leap of faith here. When a company commissions software from another firm, apart from contractual agreements are there any standard practices that one can quote here to say this is how the industry handles the risk arising out of product defects that could potentially knock the person out of business or worse liable for external damages too?
I have been an amateur for 11 years now ON and OFF mainly because communication by itself (even the kind of communication that wireless offers!) is now ubiquitous with the arrival of the WWW, cell phones and sat. phones and so on. However, I believe that wireless has its own space and needs to reinvent itself. 802.11 is a great opportunity to bring out the spirit of amateur radio which is more about experimentation and exploration of our environment than just about those rock solid 59+ 40db signals from your cell phone.
lets hope that this effort provides a new lease of life to the now ailing (in terms of activity and numbers) hobby.
I wonder who constitute the Indian ISP Association and Hindustani times, that doesnt make sense either. There isnt a newspaper of that name of any standing in the Indian sub-continent.
One of the large Indian ISPs just changed hands and went to one of India's biggest private business houses but they continue to dominate Internet services both at a retail and at a business/corporate level.
The very notion that these entities can think of charging large portals is complete balderdash. First up even if this statement were to be true by a remote strech of imagination does anyone have any idea how many dollars are actually made in India? Should be a fraction of the viewership because most people in India still dont spend dollars (that is important.. dollars as opposed to local currency purchases) that would even show up on the big ISPs.
Secondly, the very notion that people who allow access to services on the Internet will be able to hold a democracy to ransom by preventing users from accessing the sites on the Internet is crazy. Indians dont live in a place where this will even see the light of day in thought forget practice.
Third and most important, inforamation technology is one of the only Indian industries showing a decent growth and sustaining it [considering it gives India more than 25% of its export income] will be a priority with teh govt. and they are not going to kill the golden goose for an insane idea.
going further there are any number of reasons why this report sounds completely baseless.
NASA does have a need to involve the greater participation of humanity at least in the form of awareness which will lead to heightened involvement in the space program which has started showing signs of slowing compared to the 60's (for various reasons unnecessary to restate here), so what better way than to advertise and in the bargain offer something no human would refuse - a free trip down memory lane to leave your mark in this universe for long after you are gone - so what if you did not build the Taj Mahal ! you have your own piece of history in the making !!
There is no bubble.. and this is no PR work... Space research is very very important to humanity. The works of NASA, Russian Space agency, ESA etc., should not be seen in the context of simple experiments, but more in sync with space exploration.
If we are any bit serious as the human race to go out to the far reaches of the universe we have to start today.. Future generations would not pardon us if we sat quiet and content saying that anything we do will not yield results in our lifetime so why do it....
No we have always and should always stand on the shoulders of giants when we think and act.. to quote Newton !!!
Living in space as opposed to space jaunts are something which only the russians have managed and that too for a short period of a year or so.. I mean we should shortly have generations living there... its a colonial thing.. but we need to have that...
So we should all lend our shoulders to the wheel...
I have only one noting (since i dont have SSH right now.. I cannot log in and have a look)
I love the idea of content management going free for all... but considering that we are in a society where freedom does not necessarily lead to productive activities.. how will someone like geekflav keep the sanity of the site..
I mean you wouldnt want someone to change links to point to useless (read porno, other undesirable ) links...
the title says it all, but let me tell you a little more about Bangalore a small city (by western standards !) in South India. This cosmopolitan place is a revelation..
Its not without the problems other Indian cities face esp. support infrastructure, public transport etc., but in terms of human potential, IT saviness etc., this place should stand out...
If you are looking for GEEK power, this place is fairly up to the mark, what with most of the american big boys having a presence in some form and manner.. (I hate to admit but most of them send over their maintenance tasks here...) implying the geeks are around.. its a great place to be.
Let me continue to sell this place.. The main selling point for a place in India is the weather.. its brilliant.. I mean I have lived in Bangalore all my life... and its a greaaat place...
The night life is not as great as any of the western cities but you have a good crowd the the pubs (highest number in India I would imagine...), the people are very nice.. and its a fun place.
So thats some info for the people here who might be interested in knowing about other places...:)
Oh my gawd.. do/. readers need to be told something was said in good humour.. I am sure the use of the word competition was only in best interest of all reader..honestly didnt expect to find replies to the original post.. anyways, the Indian mission to the moon is most unfortunate.. India does have considerable skills in the arena of satellites, esp. Remote sensing type.. but then I believe that as a nation India has far greater uses for the money that could go into a moon mission. I mean the incremental benefits of India taking up a moon mission are not there to be seen.. true that there are dual uses for technology , blah blah but then lets live in the real world while we dream of tomorrows benefits. Reasons of space exploration do not hold water as most of the moon has been mapped quite well and as someone pointed out unmanned missions to planets such as mars are reality.. I would think India would chip in and provide greater support to the International Space station project along the lines of the antartic expeditions undertaken in the 80's. Act unseen and dont go for glamour is what I would think.. and then we should and will see the benefits.. -/ramas
If you can go the PHP way there is the option of going with the hybrid web server HAWHAW - HTML and WML Hybrid Adapter Webserver which delivers content depending on the browser capabilities.. so you no longer have to create separate HTML and WML pages to deliver similar content..
Check it out.. wonder if it helps the the person who wanted to use Servlets/JSP on a non IIS server but this info might be useful to others,
While it might be true that the supercomputers efficiency to deal with applications specifically written cannot be argued about, it is also true on teh same count that the excellent refurbishing of the old machines into high performance Beowulf clusters has meant that the power of having superior and faster processor power has gone from the hands of the few who could afford it to teh hands of thousands who need this power and afford it as well..
Dont get me wrong here. its nothe average home user who would like to go and build a 200 processor beowulf cluster.. but more the universities and institutions who have been wronged by the US government from buying these so-called munitions for legitimate computing purposes..
from a technical standpoint, the argument that beowulf clusters simply cannot stand up to the computing power of supercomputers can be accepted to an extent and thats the way it will be for sometime..
as mentioned elsewhere.. its true that languages like c/c++ are not the best for parallel computing but more high perf fortran because of its native supportin the form of parallel lbs for faster computations.. so there are other considerations for evaluating the perf of supercomputers v beowulf cluster..
This the first IMAX production from a major production house.. Disney.. did not evoke the same feelings I had during the show as that I had just before the start of the show.. the IMAX theatre and the ambnience..implied that the show would be one of the most stunning visual displays of the creativity of the human mind..but that was not to be.. It was to be honest quite normal...
Having said that.. I must add that the show in the new London theatre near Waterloo station..was one of the most entertaining visual treats..and a "must-see" if you are a disney fan..
A little more of Donald would have added to the spice of the film + some of the musicals were contrived..
Its not just about reaching 1/7 or 1/5 of the population.. its more about making available to a large population a choice... which at the present moment does not exist.. most people in India simply use pirated copies of Windoze.. cos its easliy available to the present computer users...even tho they live under the threat of software piracy raids etc.. Redhat/Caldera and others(flamers >./dev/null) and other co's need to be proactive and spend some effort marketing their services in India..it maybe small today.. but just wait and watch..
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps we would need to broaden the debate a little to distinguish between computer maintenance related activities and the need for most people to have local storage capabilities. It really brings into focus a couple of important elements.
a. People would definitely and gladly give up the computing infrastructure maintenance especially if one is looking at savings in licensing costs, hardware obsolesence risks, smoother hardware/firmward/software upgrade paths and so on. Microsoft is weak here, unless of course they are able to move in that direction - remember M$ consumer products are really raking in the moolah these days.
b. People are less likely (even your mother I would hazard a guess) to give up personal information, and other information such as documents abnd such like data to an ISP or any of that ilk. Think about the difficulties of changing service providers, it doesnt make sense. Here M$ is on much stronger ground but perhaps not for long because people would then only be interested in storage and there are definitely a number of players who can give the best of both worlds, storage which is local yet computing which is requestesd and used on demand.
What does the slashdot community think about bandwidth becoming like our electricity - generated on demand and ubiquitos?
As I read this rather interesting post, I am trying to figure out why Amazon took this route rather than the many many routes available to them to publicise or provide a richer experience to the average Joe buyer...
/.ers here i.e., the ability to help researchers to find out obscure stuff that wont find its way even into the google scheme of things but that is not a huge majority so I am left wondering.
Even with a full text search facility I doubt very much if it can come close to matching the experience of flipping through a book at the local book store no matter how effective the searching facility.
I can think of one reason and that has already been mentioned by a few
Its surprising that this lament should come from the bastion of free wheeling businesses. At the end of the day, its about building a certain competitiveness that is sustainable. Clearly providing tech support at American wages wasnt sustainable and the positions had to move to India.
At the end of the day, customers hang up or have a bad experience because its a changing experience, but this is a learning system and soon as people on both sides begin understanding each other better, this will seen less often.
So I might not be so hard on the companies to say they dont care. Finally, and this is probably overlooked in most items that talk about jobs moving elsewhere is that the places to which these jobs go are themselves usually a potential high growth marketplace e.g., China and India and has the capacity to sustain huge volumes on its own in the not so distant future.
I am just curious here and therefore my question here must be seen in that context. In the case of the slammer worm and with various other virus related incidents, the victim has almost always been shrink wrapped, standard off-the-shelf products (even if one includes operating systems in this league). So the argument could go that product liability is inappropriate because here you were given a tool if you like and its up to you to do what you wanted with it. Yes I admit that fundamental flaws should not be present but I am not sure if I am on terra firma on that ground alone.
Anyway, now what about bespoke software of the kind that runs banking systems? Surely there is a leap of faith here. When a company commissions software from another firm, apart from contractual agreements are there any standard practices that one can quote here to say this is how the industry handles the risk arising out of product defects that could potentially knock the person out of business or worse liable for external damages too?
I have been an amateur for 11 years now ON and OFF mainly because communication by itself (even the kind of communication that wireless offers!) is now ubiquitous with the arrival of the WWW, cell phones and sat. phones and so on. However, I believe that wireless has its own space and needs to reinvent itself. 802.11 is a great opportunity to bring out the spirit of amateur radio which is more about experimentation and exploration of our environment than just about those rock solid 59+ 40db signals from your cell phone.
lets hope that this effort provides a new lease of life to the now ailing (in terms of activity and numbers) hobby.
I wonder who constitute the Indian ISP Association and Hindustani times, that doesnt make sense either. There isnt a newspaper of that name of any standing in the Indian sub-continent.
One of the large Indian ISPs just changed hands and went to one of India's biggest private business houses but they continue to dominate Internet services both at a retail and at a business/corporate level.
The very notion that these entities can think of charging large portals is complete balderdash. First up even if this statement were to be true by a remote strech of imagination does anyone have any idea how many dollars are actually made in India? Should be a fraction of the viewership because most people in India still dont spend dollars (that is important.. dollars as opposed to local currency purchases) that would even show up on the big ISPs.
Secondly, the very notion that people who allow access to services on the Internet will be able to hold a democracy to ransom by preventing users from accessing the sites on the Internet is crazy. Indians dont live in a place where this will even see the light of day in thought forget practice.
Third and most important, inforamation technology is one of the only Indian industries showing a decent growth and sustaining it [considering it gives India more than 25% of its export income] will be a priority with teh govt. and they are not going to kill the golden goose for an insane idea.
going further there are any number of reasons why this report sounds completely baseless.
NASA does have a need to involve the greater participation of humanity at least in the form of awareness which will lead to heightened involvement in the space program which has started showing signs of slowing compared to the 60's (for various reasons unnecessary to restate here), so what better way than to advertise and in the bargain offer something no human would refuse - a free trip down memory lane to leave your mark in this universe for long after you are gone - so what if you did not build the Taj Mahal ! you have your own piece of history in the making !!
There is no bubble.. and this is no PR work... Space research is very very important to humanity. The works of NASA, Russian Space agency, ESA etc., should not be seen in the context of simple experiments, but more in sync with space exploration.
...
If we are any bit serious as the human race to go out to the far reaches of the universe we have to start today.. Future generations would not pardon us if we sat quiet and content saying that anything we do will not yield results in our lifetime so why do it....
No we have always and should always stand on the shoulders of giants when we think and act.. to quote Newton !!!
Living in space as opposed to space jaunts are something which only the russians have managed and that too for a short period of a year or so.. I mean we should shortly have generations living there... its a colonial thing.. but we need to have that
So we should all lend our shoulders to the wheel...
-/ramas
I have only one noting (since i dont have SSH right now.. I cannot log in and have a look)
..
...
I love the idea of content management going free for all... but considering that we are in a society where freedom does not necessarily lead to productive activities.. how will someone like geekflav keep the sanity of the site
I mean you wouldnt want someone to change links to point to useless (read porno, other undesirable ) links
Does anyone have a clue ?
-/r
I forgot to add, English is no problem, you will save shitload of money in India on an american salary ! .
Internet access is nowhere near as great as in UK/Japan but its fine if you work in a decent place like http://www.intltechpark.com
ciao
-/r
the title says it all, but let me tell you a little more about Bangalore a small city (by western standards !) in South India. This cosmopolitan place is a revelation ..
...
... and its a greaaat place...
:)
Its not without the problems other Indian cities face esp. support infrastructure, public transport etc., but in terms of human potential, IT saviness etc., this place should stand out
If you are looking for GEEK power, this place is fairly up to the mark, what with most of the american big boys having a presence in some form and manner.. (I hate to admit but most of them send over their maintenance tasks here...) implying the geeks are around.. its a great place to be.
Let me continue to sell this place..
The main selling point for a place in India is the weather.. its brilliant.. I mean I have lived in Bangalore all my life
The night life is not as great as any of the western cities but you have a good crowd the the pubs (highest number in India I would imagine...), the people are very nice.. and its a fun place.
So thats some info for the people here who might be interested in knowing about other places...
Cheers,
-/ramas
Oh my gawd.. do /. readers need to be told something was said in good humour.. I am sure the use of the word competition was only in best interest of all reader..honestly didnt expect to find replies to the original post.. anyways, the Indian mission to the moon is most unfortunate.. India does have considerable skills in the arena of satellites, esp. Remote sensing type.. but then I believe that as a nation India has far greater uses for the money that could go into a moon mission. I mean the incremental benefits of India taking up a moon mission are not there to be seen .. true that there are dual uses for technology , blah blah but then lets live in the real world while we dream of tomorrows benefits. Reasons of space exploration do not hold water as most of the moon has been mapped quite well and as someone pointed out unmanned missions to planets such as mars are reality.. I would think India would chip in and provide greater support to the International Space station project along the lines of the antartic expeditions undertaken in the 80's. Act unseen and dont go for glamour is what I would think.. and then we should and will see the benefits.. -/ramas
Sorry I forgot to post the URL..
www.hawhaw.de...
Cheers,
-/r
If you can go the PHP way there is the option of going with the hybrid web server HAWHAW - HTML and WML Hybrid Adapter Webserver which delivers content depending on the browser capabilities.. so you no longer have to create separate HTML and WML pages to deliver similar content..
.. wonder if it helps the the person who wanted to use Servlets/JSP on a non IIS server but this info might be useful to others,
Check it out
Cheers
-/ramas
While it might be true that the supercomputers efficiency to deal with applications specifically written cannot be argued about, it is also true on teh same count that the excellent refurbishing of the old machines into high performance Beowulf clusters has meant that the power of having superior and faster processor power has gone from the hands of the few who could afford it to teh hands of thousands who need this power and afford it as well..
..
Dont get me wrong here. its nothe average home user who would like to go and build a 200 processor beowulf cluster.. but more the universities and institutions who have been wronged by the US government from buying these so-called munitions for legitimate computing purposes..
from a technical standpoint, the argument that beowulf clusters simply cannot stand up to the computing power of supercomputers can be accepted to an extent and thats the way it will be for sometime..
as mentioned elsewhere.. its true that languages like c/c++ are not the best for parallel computing but more high perf fortran because of its native supportin the form of parallel lbs for faster computations.. so there are other considerations for evaluating the perf of supercomputers v beowulf cluster..
my 2 cents
This the first IMAX production from a major production house.. Disney.. did not evoke the same feelings I had during the show as that I had just before the start of the show.. the IMAX theatre and the ambnience..implied that the show would be one of the most stunning visual displays of the creativity of the human mind..but that was not to be .. It was to be honest quite normal...
Having said that.. I must add that the show in the new London theatre near Waterloo station..was one of the most entertaining visual treats..and a "must-see" if you are a disney fan..
A little more of Donald would have added to the spice of the film + some of the musicals were contrived..
A day in New York was absolutely fantastic !!
Its not just about reaching 1/7 or 1/5 of the population .. its more about making available to a large population a choice... which at the present moment does not exist.. /dev/null) and other co's need to be proactive and spend some effort marketing their services in India..it maybe small today.. but just wait and watch..
most people in India simply use pirated copies of Windoze.. cos its easliy available to the present computer users...even tho they live under the threat of software piracy raids etc..
Redhat/Caldera and others(flamers >.