A lot of people assume that you will maybe get a job for a couple years before you have to train your replacement in a third world country who will make $2 an hour.
I agree with this, but also, that in terms of programming, as languages get more powerful, many developers realize that after age 35, you become too expensive and they can hire someone right out of school to do many of the things you do. That's not to say that this applies literally and a season developer doesn't bring many skills to the table that many companies need. Rather, there aren't enough jobs for super-experienced people.
I have been in the field since the early 90's and as I look around the many offices I have been to, the overwhelming majority of 'computer people' are 30 and under. Granted some go into management, but that still doesn't bode well with engineering-types.
Actually, they have a point. I doubt anyone will unseat Google in the searching business. Rarely does a competitor do this (unless they become utterly clueless). It does happen more frequently (especially in tech) when what the top company does, no longer becomes that relavent and a competitor comes in and provides something new alltogether.
It's not a clear-cut great analogy, but I look at Google vs. Microsoft in that light. However, contrary to what people on Slashdot post, Microsoft is still poised to make a boatload of cash (more than Google)--at least for the forseeable future.
I am not praising Microsoft, but rather being realistic. Vista will come out, late, and it will be marginally better than XP, but everyone will eventually upgrade, all new PCs will be sold with Vista, and Microsoft will still stay number one.
These people are either overwhelmed by the number of claims and have no time to do the proper research before granting a patent, or they are are just plain stupid. I'm going to be generous and assume that these examiners are given a quota that they have to have resolved each week and that they haven't the time or resources to validate every claim. There is probably also a lack of expertise in the USPTO to properly vet the claims made in these applications.
A patent attorney I know who used to work in some fashion at the Patent Office basically said that they are (for the most part) interested in granting as many patents as they can. When you are granted a patent, in addition to the upfront fees, there is some sort of yearly 'maintenance fee' (apparently patents rust).
What's even worse is this attorney works for a F500 company and says it's quite common (himself included) to have yearly 'patent quotas' that he has to meet (for his company). That's just plain wrong.
True, yet even this vaporware statement sows the seeds of having such a product in the minds of a very large audience. Kudos to Google/Sun for taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook and running it to perfection.
Do you know how many times Sun has said they are coming out with something that makes Windows irrelavent? At least this time they didn't directly state it in the press release.
This is so far from something close to 'war'.
Hey let's build a platform that makes Windows useless.
Oh my god, did you hear that? Microsoft is doomed.
It takes a lot more than that to topple the giant.
This has to be a joke article, it has the rantings of 12 year old.
Given all the ads on this site (there's like 90% adds and 10% content) I expect they are just posting controversial things to generate revenue.
Don't even bother with this. It's not even an article. It appears to be an article, but the content is no better than some rantings you'd find in a blog.
The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered.
When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in.
The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations.
It's actually just supply and demand. If there were only 4 AC repair people in my city (sorry, the windows in my building don't open) you can bet he/she would be extremely highly valued.
If you can find 10 AC repair people to fix your problem, it will be more competitive (i.e lower cost to the customer).
Same goes for software development, where as odd as it sounds, the customer is the employer looking to pay employees to do a service.
As software development gets easier, languages get more powerful and require less knowledge to accomplish 'greater' things, the average salary for a developer won't increase as much.
This is very evident in Indian-outsourcing (just an example). While it doesn't apply to all companies (I know many software companies who could never outsource their development), it does fit a lot of the generic IT software groups.
There are (roughly) 8760 hours in a year.
94.8% of that is ~8304 hours of uptime.
Conversely, that's 456 hours of downtime.
Which translates into 19 days of downtime.
I would imagine that 99.999 is where regular POTS providers are at these days (maybe even higher).
Not considering the study was only for two months which is hardly (statistically) representative of 'uptime'.
So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?"
Unfortunately, it will probably be Windows 2007, Windows 2010, etc. I have see a ton of awesome and inspriring OSes over the number of years and it always comes down to compatibility.
Now why would a guy running a blog named "Professional blogger - Helping bloggers earn money" possibly want to exaggerate the amount of money he makes off his blogging?
It reminds me of that crooked scam that went around 10 years ago where you run all these ads in newspapers around the country:
The ad tells you to send $10 to get information on how to make $10,000/mo. You mail your money and receive (what amounts to) 'training materials' that tell you to do the same thing.
One guy would be on late-night TV hawking this. He reminded me of some smooth-talking salesman. But hey, he's probably laughing his ass off sucking down mai-tais in Maui (I think that is where he 'was' in those informercials).
Why would anyone really want this? I love technology and it's high on the geek factor, but why would you want to introduce watching TV to all the foibles of the Internet infrastructure (dropped packets, latency, just plain slow sometimes) when something works very well. I can't remember the last time my cable TV went out but can easily remember a dozen times my cable Internet mysteriously stopped working for a min or ten.
Most of the ones that matter never need to worry about a paycheck again in their life.
They stay at Google because of the culture and to interact with other top people in their fields.
While I don't know the intimate details of the typical Google employee's stock option portfolio, they are far from worrying about paychecks.
The typical option has a vesting schedule and most employees don't sell for a couple years (the typical schedule has been either 4 or 5 years until fully [100%] vested).
The executives and founders of the company (IIRC) have only six months (SEC regulations) to sit on their stock (since IPO). Look at the history of Google and Yahoo employees. They had to wait 4 years to 'cash-in' and Bezos and company have been cashing out for a while--not to mention cashing out when valuations were really high, not after the bust.
Now that's not to say there aren't a bunch of rich people there, but the parking lot is hardly filled with Ferraris.
The difference between WiFi and the car/house analogy is that a WiFi hotspot broadcasts its information, inviting connections. There is no "breaking in" involved. If there was a house that had a sign in front saying "Open House Today" with the door open, you are welcome to enter legally, as it's an open house.
I think it has more to do with intent than anything. In your analogy, suppose 10 people come into this 'open house' and start partying. When the cops come the people say yeah there was a sign in front that said 'open house'. The owner would probably say "yes, but that is not what I put it up there for" (he's selling his house).
The same goes for WiFi. Unless the owner of the WiFi purposely left it open (and can tell the cops this), people using it are stealing.
For that matter, what in the world would he be doing there all day? I can't imagine he was just checking his email.
If the President of the United States, the Governor of California, and various other politicians can hold political office regardless of what they did in their past (I won't even go into the difference between actually *doing* something illegal and just writing about it)...
That's old world thinking (not that I agree with it) , but...
Everyone made a big stink about Clinton and the fact that he was a draft-dodger/flag burner...
The irony was that Clinton was given the highest of all clearances, but someone who wasn't elected (e.g. your average military enlistee) who had a similar background could never dream of clearance even remotely close to this.
One would think that the gov't would be pushing hard to crack down on this problem. It will never go away (like most crimes), but they could make signifcant inroads in stopping this rampant outbreak.
Case in point, look at the software piracy issue. Yes, it needs to be stopped. The gov't has assembled this multi-national coaltion to bust the pirate rings. A similar action could be started, which I think would better serve the average citizen.
But then again, a lobby would need to exist for this. There probably is one, but not with a lot of heavy funding.
He doesn't need to "sell out". The man is worth about $200 million, and is old enough that it won't matter anymore anyway (his children are plenty successful enough at what they do to get by, too).
Is Bob Dylan trendy again or is he so untrendy that it's cool to like him? Or was he just cheap and available? They should have at least tried to get an 80's band.
There was a show on PBS a while back talking about this--specifically Bob Dylan and all the anti-establishment types now selling themselves to corporate America. They documented how Bob Dylan and his contemporaries routinely play private, corporate-only concerts for things like annual meetings, celebrations, etc.
While I could care less it's interesting nonetheless to see how the mighly dollar rules all.
And frankly, on many other levels I'd have to agree that I think Google is "worth" far more than Time Warner. In terms of my daily life Google is worth much more.
Well in terms of daily life, I would bet the water department (unless you are one of those bottled-water types:) ) or power company is much, much more important to you than Google. Case in point, my power went out the other night and it just plained sucked walking around in the dark. My access to google was the farthest thing from my mind. Perspectives.
I think Google is a great company, but if some other search engine came along, I would switch in a second. Right now they provide me something useful--and quite frankly, I haven't even looked to see if there were others better (they might very well have been). I use Gmail, but it is hardly something I need. I need email, but certainly not Gmail.
Google is the hot company right now (what that means, who knows). They have mindshare, but marketshare (at least what I consider) is something completely different.
If google 'went away' tonight at midnight, tomorrow would be a 'talkative' day, but I hardly think most (I say _most_) businesses would suffer. If Microsoft went away tomorrow, business would continue, but it would suffer a much bigger impact (all easy pot-shots aside).
When I say impact, I mean what the majority of businesses do with MS products (boy am I setting myself up) not your typical Linux geek who thinks all Microsoft products suck.
Slashdot Mirror
Commodore went out of business?
Great. I hope I they'll still ship the new OS for my Amiga. There's still an upgrade path for my A1000, right? Right?
A lot of people assume that you will maybe get a job for a couple years before you have to train your replacement in a third world country who will make $2 an hour.
I agree with this, but also, that in terms of programming, as languages get more powerful, many developers realize that after age 35, you become too expensive and they can hire someone right out of school to do many of the things you do. That's not to say that this applies literally and a season developer doesn't bring many skills to the table that many companies need. Rather, there aren't enough jobs for super-experienced people.
I have been in the field since the early 90's and as I look around the many offices I have been to, the overwhelming majority of 'computer people' are 30 and under. Granted some go into management, but that still doesn't bode well with engineering-types.
Actually, they have a point. I doubt anyone will unseat Google in the searching business. Rarely does a competitor do this (unless they become utterly clueless). It does happen more frequently (especially in tech) when what the top company does, no longer becomes that relavent and a competitor comes in and provides something new alltogether.
It's not a clear-cut great analogy, but I look at Google vs. Microsoft in that light. However, contrary to what people on Slashdot post, Microsoft is still poised to make a boatload of cash (more than Google)--at least for the forseeable future.
I am not praising Microsoft, but rather being realistic. Vista will come out, late, and it will be marginally better than XP, but everyone will eventually upgrade, all new PCs will be sold with Vista, and Microsoft will still stay number one.
Yes, it is a bit depressing.
There are definitely parts of the world where that would be a fantastic income, but my home country isn't one of them.
Yes, and I am sure they all have Amazon.com accounts with credit-cards hooked up to them.
These people are either overwhelmed by the number of claims and have no time to do the proper research before granting a patent, or they are are just plain stupid. I'm going to be generous and assume that these examiners are given a quota that they have to have resolved each week and that they haven't the time or resources to validate every claim. There is probably also a lack of expertise in the USPTO to properly vet the claims made in these applications.
A patent attorney I know who used to work in some fashion at the Patent Office basically said that they are (for the most part) interested in granting as many patents as they can. When you are granted a patent, in addition to the upfront fees, there is some sort of yearly 'maintenance fee' (apparently patents rust).
What's even worse is this attorney works for a F500 company and says it's quite common (himself included) to have yearly 'patent quotas' that he has to meet (for his company). That's just plain wrong.
True, yet even this vaporware statement sows the seeds of having such a product in the minds of a very large audience. Kudos to Google/Sun for taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook and running it to perfection.
Do you know how many times Sun has said they are coming out with something that makes Windows irrelavent? At least this time they didn't directly state it in the press release.
This is so far from something close to 'war'.
Hey let's build a platform that makes Windows useless.
Oh my god, did you hear that? Microsoft is doomed.
It takes a lot more than that to topple the giant.
My friend Mark said that he saw Steve Ballmer totally throw a chair at some kid just because the kid opened a window.
Yes, but the window was actually an X-based window.
This has to be a joke article, it has the rantings of 12 year old.
Given all the ads on this site (there's like 90% adds and 10% content) I expect they are just posting controversial things to generate revenue.
Don't even bother with this. It's not even an article. It appears to be an article, but the content is no better than some rantings you'd find in a blog.
The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered.
When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in. The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations.
It's actually just supply and demand. If there were only 4 AC repair people in my city (sorry, the windows in my building don't open) you can bet he/she would be extremely highly valued.
If you can find 10 AC repair people to fix your problem, it will be more competitive (i.e lower cost to the customer).
Same goes for software development, where as odd as it sounds, the customer is the employer looking to pay employees to do a service.
As software development gets easier, languages get more powerful and require less knowledge to accomplish 'greater' things, the average salary for a developer won't increase as much.
This is very evident in Indian-outsourcing (just an example). While it doesn't apply to all companies (I know many software companies who could never outsource their development), it does fit a lot of the generic IT software groups.
My math is terrible, but...
There are (roughly) 8760 hours in a year.
94.8% of that is ~8304 hours of uptime.
Conversely, that's 456 hours of downtime.
Which translates into 19 days of downtime.
I would imagine that 99.999 is where regular POTS providers are at these days (maybe even higher).
Not considering the study was only for two months which is hardly (statistically) representative of 'uptime'.
So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?"
Unfortunately, it will probably be Windows 2007, Windows 2010, etc. I have see a ton of awesome and inspriring OSes over the number of years and it always comes down to compatibility.
Now why would a guy running a blog named "Professional blogger - Helping bloggers earn money" possibly want to exaggerate the amount of money he makes off his blogging?
It reminds me of that crooked scam that went around 10 years ago where you run all these ads in newspapers around the country:
The ad tells you to send $10 to get information on how to make $10,000/mo. You mail your money and receive (what amounts to) 'training materials' that tell you to do the same thing.
One guy would be on late-night TV hawking this. He reminded me of some smooth-talking salesman. But hey, he's probably laughing his ass off sucking down mai-tais in Maui (I think that is where he 'was' in those informercials).
for NBC's Must See T (buffering)...
Why would anyone really want this? I love technology and it's high on the geek factor, but why would you want to introduce watching TV to all the foibles of the Internet infrastructure (dropped packets, latency, just plain slow sometimes) when something works very well. I can't remember the last time my cable TV went out but can easily remember a dozen times my cable Internet mysteriously stopped working for a min or ten.
Most of the ones that matter never need to worry about a paycheck again in their life.
They stay at Google because of the culture and to interact with other top people in their fields.
While I don't know the intimate details of the typical Google employee's stock option portfolio, they are far from worrying about paychecks.
The typical option has a vesting schedule and most employees don't sell for a couple years (the typical schedule has been either 4 or 5 years until fully [100%] vested).
The executives and founders of the company (IIRC) have only six months (SEC regulations) to sit on their stock (since IPO). Look at the history of Google and Yahoo employees. They had to wait 4 years to 'cash-in' and Bezos and company have been cashing out for a while--not to mention cashing out when valuations were really high, not after the bust.
Now that's not to say there aren't a bunch of rich people there, but the parking lot is hardly filled with Ferraris.
Yes, if I never deleted my cache and I happened to go that site, those pages would still be on my machine. Am I going to get sued too?
The difference between WiFi and the car/house analogy is that a WiFi hotspot broadcasts its information, inviting connections. There is no "breaking in" involved. If there was a house that had a sign in front saying "Open House Today" with the door open, you are welcome to enter legally, as it's an open house.
I think it has more to do with intent than anything. In your analogy, suppose 10 people come into this 'open house' and start partying. When the cops come the people say yeah there was a sign in front that said 'open house'. The owner would probably say "yes, but that is not what I put it up there for" (he's selling his house).
The same goes for WiFi. Unless the owner of the WiFi purposely left it open (and can tell the cops this), people using it are stealing.
For that matter, what in the world would he be doing there all day? I can't imagine he was just checking his email.
If the President of the United States, the Governor of California, and various other politicians can hold political office regardless of what they did in their past (I won't even go into the difference between actually *doing* something illegal and just writing about it)...
That's old world thinking (not that I agree with it) , but...
Everyone made a big stink about Clinton and the fact that he was a draft-dodger/flag burner...
The irony was that Clinton was given the highest of all clearances, but someone who wasn't elected (e.g. your average military enlistee) who had a similar background could never dream of clearance even remotely close to this.
One would think that the gov't would be pushing hard to crack down on this problem. It will never go away (like most crimes), but they could make signifcant inroads in stopping this rampant outbreak.
Case in point, look at the software piracy issue. Yes, it needs to be stopped. The gov't has assembled this multi-national coaltion to bust the pirate rings. A similar action could be started, which I think would better serve the average citizen.
But then again, a lobby would need to exist for this. There probably is one, but not with a lot of heavy funding.
I was lucky enough to have an honest recruiter for the Navy warn me up front about what I'd be facing if I put the uniform on.
I always thought the Navy was upfront about the life threatening work you would be doing.
You know. Navy. Accelerate Your Life.
He doesn't need to "sell out". The man is worth about $200 million, and is old enough that it won't matter anymore anyway (his children are plenty successful enough at what they do to get by, too).
i o.php?id=2481
One click shopping to the extreme.
http://www.worldwidecorporateevents.com/display_b
Is Bob Dylan trendy again or is he so untrendy that it's cool to like him? Or was he just cheap and available? They should have at least tried to get an 80's band.
There was a show on PBS a while back talking about this--specifically Bob Dylan and all the anti-establishment types now selling themselves to corporate America. They documented how Bob Dylan and his contemporaries routinely play private, corporate-only concerts for things like annual meetings, celebrations, etc.
While I could care less it's interesting nonetheless to see how the mighly dollar rules all.
And frankly, on many other levels I'd have to agree that I think Google is "worth" far more than Time Warner. In terms of my daily life Google is worth much more.
:) ) or power company is much, much more important to you than Google. Case in point, my power went out the other night and it just plained sucked walking around in the dark. My access to google was the farthest thing from my mind. Perspectives.
Well in terms of daily life, I would bet the water department (unless you are one of those bottled-water types
I think Google is a great company, but if some other search engine came along, I would switch in a second. Right now they provide me something useful--and quite frankly, I haven't even looked to see if there were others better (they might very well have been). I use Gmail, but it is hardly something I need. I need email, but certainly not Gmail.
Google is the hot company right now (what that means, who knows). They have mindshare, but marketshare (at least what I consider) is something completely different.
If google 'went away' tonight at midnight, tomorrow would be a 'talkative' day, but I hardly think most (I say _most_) businesses would suffer. If Microsoft went away tomorrow, business would continue, but it would suffer a much bigger impact (all easy pot-shots aside).
When I say impact, I mean what the majority of businesses do with MS products (boy am I setting myself up) not your typical Linux geek who thinks all Microsoft products suck.
Should have previewed...
Constrained.
Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb.
I always thought that Evil will always triumph over good because good is contrained.