I don't believe that this is correct. I believe this amount is only what their manufacturing cost are. So yes, they are selling it at a loss. Guess they need to strong arm Intel and Nvidia for a price break. Also they will have to start whipping the Mexicans who are building these things.
First of all Saddam shouldn't you be worried about your country being blown off the earth, rather than video game consoles...
Second, if you developed games would you sign a deal to ONLY develop for the Xbox. Hmmm give up 95% market share instantly! You would have to pay that development team a ton!
Here is the problem for old Microsoft.
Their machine is close to a PC. However most modern PC's are faster and all of them have better monitors. The developers who develop games for the PC can port their games over with little trouble, BUT (and this is a HUGE but), those developers are the ones who generally target the PC. So the people like me who would consider an Xbox but have a PC will just buy the PC game. Why do I need an Xbox? All the games look better on the PC and generally play much better and the game selection is MUCH better.
Unreal Tournament 200x on your TV or on a 20" 1280X1024 monitor? Yes the Mech game looks good, but does anyone believe that one won't be released for the PC that blows it away?
This contrast Nintendo and somewhat Sony. They have always developed games that are console based. Their games generally don't port that well to a PC (some do). I don't own a Nintendo Game Cube, but I am considering it because their games look fun. What I like to call "Living Room Fun", in that their games are made so that the whole family can enjoy them. Will those games ever be ported to my PC? Maby, but it will be a long while, and they probably won't play as well and lastly my whole family doesn't want to sit in front of a computer.
I own a PS2 and can't help but think what if Sony wins the console war this year at Christmass. It will all but be over. Heck even if they break even with Microsoft and Nintendo they win. I can't help but think that every month the PS2 keeps outselling the GC and Xbox is another month Sony can refine the PS3.
First of all IF your IT manager makes $120/hour, I know great people that would do it for half that rate for you.
The way I see it is that some I.T. people were overpaid and took advantage of the system, and now a lot of companies are taking advantage of economic hard times on employees. Either way people are doing wrong. I know of a place that forces their I.T. staff to work 7 days a week. Do you honestly believe that they will have ANYONE working for them when they can find another job?
Well this has been closed for a while now, but I can't let this die.
You said "You sound more pissed off you are not making money from the skills and talents that the Indians have provided the IT sector. Stop whining like some labor union and get involved and leverage the skill sets found abroad."
First, I do make a considerable amount of money for my talent in I.T. I am willing to bet that you have NEVER built ANY system, or for that matter have NEVER coded a system with more than 100 lines of code, and HelloWorld with 99 lines of comments doesn't count! What you need to consider here is that people who design systems for companies need to know the business BETTER than the rest of the business. The developers have to know EVERY aspect of the system. When a greedy cost cutter decides to outsource that work to India, two things happen. 1. The intellectual property that was created for that company is generally used for other companies without their consent. The ethics used by these companies isn't great. So code developed for your company will probably be used for your competitor. 2. When the company in the "West" comes to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to do business this way, and they decide to bring it back, there will be few coders here left to do the work, that have experience with it. Specificaly, there will be no lower level or mid level coders. So the cost of finding someone will be high. This will help cement India development for some companies.
Your second point/question says do we want to subsidize? YES!!!! Do I want Unions NO!! You come to the conclusion that the both have to happen. I think your example of farmers is an excellent one. If we choose to kill off all of our farmers because we can import the food cheaper, by slave labor mind you... then we are setting ourselve up for a huge problem when the likes of Mad Cow hit that country. You can fool yourself into thinking our FDA would catch it!
But both food and steel need ships and labor to bring in to the "West". That cost money and time. Code takes NOTHING!!!! That is the core difference between these commodities. Yes code is a commodity.
Lastly you say that there is a problem in the education and views in the US. I somewhat agree that there are issue in the educational system, but that has little to do with this discussion.
I will go back to my original post. The real problem is greed. You say "With different time zones, good skill sets, and common languages, you can really grow a business with outsourced development. Many startups now use this as a model for quick entry into the market."
WTF?? I have worked with and for many startups and have found NOBODY that has used this model for success. Name ONE company. I can show you a ton of companies that are testing the waters of it now, and it isn't going well. The problem is that it will take years to switch back. I can point you to a HUGE number of companies that will come in with a "Project Manager" and "Requirements Team", talk with people for ~1-6 months and then plan on giving a "Solid" design to let the slaves... er... I mean Indians do the coding. How are these companies doing? Most are not doing so well.
Again, I pay taxes that go to this country. They do NOT. Someone like you I imagine, is getting the extra money from this slave er.. I mean Indian labor.
This isn't my main point though.
I pay taxes on stuff I do here. They do not. That is wrong. Using your thinking it would be ok if I took prisoners over here and let them code, then sold that "service" to people for near free. But I have a feeling that you would be all for that!
My point is that you do NOT pay any tax here for work done in this country. I have NO problem with Indian coders over here working and getting paid. They help pay for our hospitals, schools and military...
It doesn't make sense to tax a car built outside this country and not tax something like software development. The only difference is that it doesn't take much effort to "move" code in to the country. This is why it needs to be taxed much higher than an automobile.
Lets turn it around. Assume that I have a bunch of coders over here; say prison workers doing software development. I then "offer" those services to companies over in India for 1 Euro or 1 dollar an hour. Hmmmm..... I don't have to pay any taxes on that development do I? But YOU pay close to 60% of your income. I could even offer "early release" programs for these guys if they wrote good code and it worked well. This would help quality.
Well speaking for some of the "West". We have NO problem competing with India on codeing, however we pay 60% of our income in taxes. Those taxes go to pay for stuff here in the west. Those coders over in India don't pay anything! So much like cars that are taxed on import, code should also be taxed. Will this happen? No. Will Unions happen? Yes.
The real problem is greed. Do coders over here deserve 70+k a year? Most don't. However, does top management of companies over here deserve >100k/year? Very few do.
That management wants to protect their jobs and salary so they see an easy solution. Farm out all development to slave labor err I mean India.
Now if that development out of the country was taxed at around 100-160%, then both sides would win. The Indians would still get some jobs, the "West" could comete and still pay taxes over here for schools and hospitals etc.
First let me say that I love the Zaurus. I own a Palm V and a IPaq3970. However to say that Palm doesn't have anything to compare to the Zaurus isn't correct.
The new Sony (based off Palm OS) compares quite well to the Zaurus. Both are on similar hardware. Granted that the NEW Zaurus is on the Xscale processor, while the Sony is on the 20x ARM processor. BUT notice that Sharp doesn't say that their apps are 2x as fast! A lot of work has to be done to run great on the new Xscale processor, and I doubt that Sharp did that work. Or if they did, not all the apps are tuned for the new processor. In short they both rock for processing power on a PDA.
Next lets talk video. The Sony has a built in camera. The Sharp doesn't.
The Sony has 320X480 resolution, the Sharp has 320X240. Sony wins.
Both have fold out keyboards.
Both have CF slots
The Sony has a boat load more apps.
The Sharp could be your PDC and Web server and probably run MySQL.
The Sony cost more, but is out now.
The Sony runs Palm OS5. The Sharp runs Linux.
The Sharp has a great browser for surfing on a PDA.
Neither one have a good wireless solution or built in Bluetooth. It must be noted that the Sharp does offer a HUGE wirelss modem attachment, that nobody would want to carry and cost around $40/month. Both do support 802.11b CF wireless cards.
Both devices lack driver support for CF cards compared to Pocket PC devices.
Hmmm looks like I just did a comparision of the two products.
In my opinion either one is great. It just depends on what you want to do. If either one offered a good wireless solution I would have gone with it over my Ipaq. God pocket pc 2002 sucks!
Great question, and one the Novell NetWare guys keep asking. My answer is that if you have a shop of NT, Linux, Unix, Macintosh and NetWare, you will have to know the commands for each one. This can be a pain to do, so what normally happens is that you get someone who becomes an "expert" with one of those systems. Then comes in someone like Microsoft and says how much money they will save by "Standardising" on one NOS.
The other issue is that if some MCSE type is not comfortable at all working on another platform then they will ALLWAYS recommend a Microsoft solution. If they walk up to a system and it has a GUI that is similar to Windows and they can do their job, they tend to be more open to using that technology. I believe that this describes a lot of people, in that they don't want to spend a lot of time learning something totally new.
I was a Novell/Microsoft guy who decided to give Linux a try about two years ago. I found the migration easy. I used the GUI as a crutch until I could learn the command line equivilant, and found Mandrake and RedHat tools very easy to work with. Without the GUI I would still be pushing NetWare and Windows. To be honest probably Windows...
Lastly, I have converted most of our business over to Linux now... It has run great. I do miss a good directory service and the ability to add disk space to a volume on the fly (yes I know about LVMs, but most distros don't default to it) oh yeah and a good free equivilant to Groupwise/Exchange server.
I am glad that we somewhat agree, but on the issue of the cable company getting sued. It will happen. Look at the number of people that have bought things that they "knew" where dangerous and then sued later because it wasn't spelled out enough for them. I am also willing to bet that the cable company didn't display that they were going to load spyware software on the persons pc in the initial contract.
That is kinda funny about them teaching social ethics and justice...
However my point is that a person should be careful or at least take the teachings of these professors with a grain of salt. Most make their living off of the private sectors taxes. Yet have never worked in it. Over the years they have hired and promoted "like minded" teachers and have all but eliminated other points of view. This is kinda weird since most promote "open debates". This has lead to their holier than though attitudes and since most have tenyear (mis-spelled), they don't have to worry about loosing their job.
Does all this invalidate their opinions? Yes and no. Let me turn it around for you. Would you trust Adolf Hitler teaching a class on diversity? Now what if he hired and promoted most of the fellow teachers... Kinda reminds me of Sam Kinnison teaching that class on Vietnamn...
"Capitalism is a short-sighted system that puts profits before people, dollars before the environment."
I don't think that you understand what capitalism actually is. Since you recommend the person to take a cource in "social ethics and justice", I will also recommend that the person realize that well over 85% of teachers are die hard liberals and some consider themselves socialist. So please understand that before taking a course. But if we are recommending ways to learn on capitalism, then I would get
Sorry for not doing html tags! Just cut and paste.
Now to get this thing back on topic...
What the Cable company is doing is wrong. They will probably get sued over this. The person didn't agree to any EULA, AND probably more importantly the user didn't get the option to counter the contract. Specifically they didn't get an option to do a fair negotiation with the company. This cable company is foolish to do this and it will come back to haunt them. Not a very smart thing, but then they are a monopoly in that area... kinda like socialism...
It is kinda funny you mention "evil of capitalism". I assume that you are taking a shot at capitalism.
This kind of crap is exactly what would NOT happen in a true capitalist system. It is because there is a monopoly on broadband currently that prevents any competition. Most people have only one choice for broadband Cable, some have two DSL and Cable. But guess what!? You only have ONE comany to go with for either one of those. You still have to deal with your local phone company for DSL and unfortunately you only have ONE cable provider per area.
Now if you had a choice of broadband providers and one of those companies did this type of crap, then you can sure as heck bet that their competition would bring out this point.
I don't know how small your company is but ours is 9 people and we use Oracle 9i on Linux. There support has been outstanding. Their sales guys have even been great. We bought ONE copy of Oracle 9i standard DB and two copies of the Internet Developer Suite. How much smaller can you go? I pray that we don't get any smaller!!!:-)
Lets imagine it is a year a go. You went with MySQL and something goes wrong. You better pray that you set it up with transactions turned on. But being small you probably took what RedHat or Mandrake has by default (no transaction support). I hope that you have good backups. Oh yeah, forget any database triggers. I do realize that these have been addressed, but I still believe that the triggers can only be in ONE language. PHP I think. And there doesn't appear to be a gui equivilant to DbaStudio, at least for data entry.
Lets say you went with Microsoft SQL server- Well you would be real good at upgrades by now. EVERY Microsoft Shop I know has had to do tons of upgrades to their database. Oh yeah in case you haven't noticed their pricing model keeps getting more and more expensive. Also, I hope that you like Windows servers, because that is all it will run on. If you are a Microsoft'er then you don't care though... Also it is my experience that it doesn't scale well at all.
How about PostGreSQL - This actually wouldn't be that bad of a choice, but when you have a problem, you better hope that a newsgroup or the Web can help you. From what I have seen the primary OS for this is Linux, so you better like Linux.
How about if you went with FileMaker Pro? Not a bad choice, BUT still no transaction support AND I believe that it has a limit of 100 tables per database.
How about DB2? Great Database, good support. Not a bad decision. Oh the cost is as much as Oracle though, and IBM tends to be slow on getting new features out. Also, IBM tends to only like you if you buy their hardware and if you are running on one of THEIR NOSes.
How about Microsoft Access? A lot of companies run their business on it! No transaction support and serious multiple user support. I kinda like to think of it as the Titanic. It looks great and is easy to jump on, but it WILL go down and take you with it.
Lets see have I left anyone out.. I won't go in to relational databases like Gemstone, because if you think Oracle is complex...
Well it seems that every decision for a small company sucks. Yes you will find small companies that run EVERY one of the databases I mentioned and then some. All of them have their issues, good people work around those issues. I have built small systems that use MySQL, PostGreSQL, FileMaker Pro and Oracle. They all have their issues, but for what I do Oracle on Linux seems to work well if you can afford it.
Not that I totally disagree with your point, but with ".Net" people will be discouraged, or it will be far more difficult to send the actual document. My guess is that some future version of Office will default to "Send the shortcut".
Now they of course will change Office for the Mac to read from those servers... The data WILL be stored in XML on those servers, so coders will have an easy time with it.
You bring up an interesting point about paranoid people and Microsoft. I have followed Microsoft fairly closely over the last ~18 years and feel comfortable saying that they have never worked with any "standard" out there. They have ALLWAYS developed their own. Can you name an example of any "standard" software technology they have adopted and not changed? A perfect example of this would be ZIP. Why doesn't Microsoft use it instead of CAB files? There are many many more I could use as examples if you would like.
Microsoft has an internal saying "If it is not ours destroy it".
My point is this. A company that has for 18 years been trying to lock people in to their technology, will cause some people to be a bit paranoid.
1st - Having development major development done over in another country should warrant your company name at www.fuckedcompany.com
2nd. The kernel needed to be replaced years ago, and Ray Norta (mis-spelled) knew this. He had Novell heading in a UNIX direction and would have probably been known as a hero now if he would have had his way. Granted the purchase of Word Perfect was a bad idea...
Also, there has been many issues with the boys in California and those in Utah. The California people (in my opinion) wanted to head in the right direction years ago, but they were not allowed.
I have said it before and I will say it again. What if Novell dumped NetWare, or let it die a slow death, in favor of becoming a Linux distro. They could bundle all the crap they currently make and still charge for it. They would have all the source code, and I don't know of any NetWare shop that would switch off of them. I know a few that would strongly consider them.
I do agree that this should probably be some new company because of the bad name Novell has left in MANY I.T. departments.
Wow, someone didn't take their happy pill today:-)
This is far from the dumbest thing I have heard on slashdot.
The point he is trying to make is that yes it is made for tv. Duh! However, in most junkyards you can ask the owner where things are and if you are looking for a good motor, you could find one is a few min. The junkyards by me would even ask what type of engine I would like.
I think that you are hungup about the word Junkyard. I believe in their definition is means a place where they dump their junk. Their junk just happens to fit whatever they are building.
But I couldn't afford it. They tend to use proprietary robes and shoes. Man that stuff is expensive! They tell me it is better than the stuff I would buy at any other cult though, and it looks cooler. It is just sad that you don't have any real selection.
So I then went to join this cult of Micro$oft. They informed me that I misspelled their name and it doesn't have a $ in it. They seemed rather angered about this, but I explained that I have never seen it spelled any other way. Their cult seemed great on the surface, but I realized that I ownly rented their robes, I would have to pay them every three years for new ones if I needed them or not, and that the new robes generally had many problems with them to boot!
I then went to join this penguin cult. Man, they are a friendly bunch, but they seem to be divied in to a bunch of sub cults that hate each other with a passion, but not quite as much as they hate the Micro$oft cult. I kinda liked the Red Top Penguin cult, but everyone kept telling me how much they are becomming the Micro$oft of the penguin cults. They also did something to anger the other cults by standardising on their robes. I then left this cult.
I then tried a cult of the Bee. I found that this cult recently died and so I left.
A house today is MUCH more than it was a few years ago.
People have been saying that forever.
I am not saying go screw yourself and buy the most expensive home on the market you can afford in an area that looks like it is going downhill.
My point is: It is generally better to buy a house than throw money away in rent.
As one poster mentioned, they pay $1,500 in rent. I don't pay near that for a house. Could I rent a place that cost $1,500 a month? Sure! Would it be great? Yes! But at the end of the year I will have spent $18,000 to live and have nothing to show for it. If you got a house that cost $1,500 a month you would be able to deduct a large part of the interest off on your taxes AND you would gain some principle (granted a small amount for the first year).
Even if a house doesn't gain any value, you are still gaining equity in the home. With rent it ALL goes to the Renter.
If you say that you own a modist car, then you should have little to no problem living in a modest house.
Now if houses go up in value, which is normally the case, then you come out way ahead.
So lets say that you pay $1,500 a month in rent. That would equate to around $1,900 - $2,000 a month home after taxes. Granted you might have to pay your PMI, but some lenders will roll that in to the loan so at least you could take that off your taxes.
Well I am just getting around to responding to this... Days later...
Yes I am a funny conservative. I have NO problem competing against anyone in the world, BUT I pay way over 60% of my income in TAXES! Thank God I don't smoke or drink, or it could be worse.
If taxes were around 0%, then I could work for the amount foreign coders make. All I want is a level playing field which makes me sound liberal, but I would love to see the field leveled by taxes being lowered. That of course if NEVER going to happen. So hense my stance on this issue.
I also fall in to this category. I have less than $100.00 on credit card debt, modest car and an ok job. I don't have anywhere 8 months of salary saved up, becuase our family just had some major remodeling done; but this begs the question.
What the heck are you doing in an appartment? You are pissing away your rent every month. If you owned a home, then you would get a tax break (one of the few left). If you have the means to save 8 months of salary, then you should be able to afford a home. My God the interest rates are rock bottom now. What are you waiting for?
At least consider a condo. I would still get a house though...
Wow what you said sounds great! No more SQL. CMP Entity beans handles all my SQL issues...
Oh wait. I have to learn ANOTHER language. It is like SQL but yet not the same. Oh and I CAN'T have but simple relationships between tables that map to ONE bean! I want 10 or so tables to map to a "customer" bean.
Oh well I guess that I will just manage the persistance myself... OH MY GOD! trying to manage all the lifecycle stuff is a pain and weird stuff happens if you don't design it correct, and you try and scale it....
Give most of us SQL any day of the week. It is a pain, but at least you know it will work, and your data guys can help tune it. Also you don't have to worry about a lazy coder using instance variables and not cleaning them up with a bean managed persistant bean.
I don't want to claim to be some EJB hater or EJB God, but I do know that for 99% of the people out there a good JSP/Servlet engine is all they need.
I will say that if you want to get over 100 transactions a second (normal transactions 30 inserts/updates and 70 selects) EJB's appear to be the only way to get Java to scale.
They are by no means a silver bullet. The learning curve is steep, and they are difficult to test well.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe that this is correct. I believe this amount is only what their manufacturing cost are. So yes, they are selling it at a loss. Guess they need to strong arm Intel and Nvidia for a price break. Also they will have to start whipping the Mexicans who are building these things.
First of all Saddam shouldn't you be worried about your country being blown off the earth, rather than video game consoles...
Second, if you developed games would you sign a deal to ONLY develop for the Xbox. Hmmm give up 95% market share instantly! You would have to pay that development team a ton!
Here is the problem for old Microsoft.
Their machine is close to a PC. However most modern PC's are faster and all of them have better monitors. The developers who develop games for the PC can port their games over with little trouble, BUT (and this is a HUGE but), those developers are the ones who generally target the PC. So the people like me who would consider an Xbox but have a PC will just buy the PC game. Why do I need an Xbox? All the games look better on the PC and generally play much better and the game selection is MUCH better.
Unreal Tournament 200x on your TV or on a 20" 1280X1024 monitor? Yes the Mech game looks good, but does anyone believe that one won't be released for the PC that blows it away?
This contrast Nintendo and somewhat Sony. They have always developed games that are console based. Their games generally don't port that well to a PC (some do). I don't own a Nintendo Game Cube, but I am considering it because their games look fun. What I like to call "Living Room Fun", in that their games are made so that the whole family can enjoy them. Will those games ever be ported to my PC? Maby, but it will be a long while, and they probably won't play as well and lastly my whole family doesn't want to sit in front of a computer.
I own a PS2 and can't help but think what if Sony wins the console war this year at Christmass. It will all but be over. Heck even if they break even with Microsoft and Nintendo they win. I can't help but think that every month the PS2 keeps outselling the GC and Xbox is another month Sony can refine the PS3.
Wow thats kinda the attitude that Sega took. Both Sony and Nintendo MAKE money on their consoles.
Man, take a happy pill or something...
First of all IF your IT manager makes $120/hour, I know great people that would do it for half that rate for you.
The way I see it is that some I.T. people were overpaid and took advantage of the system, and now a lot of companies are taking advantage of economic hard times on employees. Either way people are doing wrong. I know of a place that forces their I.T. staff to work 7 days a week. Do you honestly believe that they will have ANYONE working for them when they can find another job?
Second why don't you post with an ID? Troll.
Well this has been closed for a while now, but I can't let this die.
You said
"You sound more pissed off you are not making money from the skills and talents that the Indians have provided the IT sector. Stop whining like some labor union and get involved and leverage the skill sets found abroad."
First, I do make a considerable amount of money for my talent in I.T. I am willing to bet that you have NEVER built ANY system, or for that matter have NEVER coded a system with more than 100 lines of code, and HelloWorld with 99 lines of comments doesn't count! What you need to consider here is that people who design systems for companies need to know the business BETTER than the rest of the business. The developers have to know EVERY aspect of the system. When a greedy cost cutter decides to outsource that work to India, two things happen.
1. The intellectual property that was created for that company is generally used for other companies without their consent. The ethics used by these companies isn't great. So code developed for your company will probably be used for your competitor.
2. When the company in the "West" comes to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to do business this way, and they decide to bring it back, there will be few coders here left to do the work, that have experience with it. Specificaly, there will be no lower level or mid level coders. So the cost of finding someone will be high. This will help cement India development for some companies.
Your second point/question says do we want to subsidize? YES!!!! Do I want Unions NO!! You come to the conclusion that the both have to happen. I think your example of farmers is an excellent one. If we choose to kill off all of our farmers because we can import the food cheaper, by slave labor mind you... then we are setting ourselve up for a huge problem when the likes of Mad Cow hit that country. You can fool yourself into thinking our FDA would catch it!
But both food and steel need ships and labor to bring in to the "West". That cost money and time. Code takes NOTHING!!!! That is the core difference between these commodities. Yes code is a commodity.
Lastly you say that there is a problem in the education and views in the US. I somewhat agree that there are issue in the educational system, but that has little to do with this discussion.
I will go back to my original post. The real problem is greed.
You say
"With different time zones, good skill sets, and common languages, you can really grow a business with outsourced development. Many startups now use this as a model for quick entry into the market."
WTF?? I have worked with and for many startups and have found NOBODY that has used this model for success. Name ONE company. I can show you a ton of companies that are testing the waters of it now, and it isn't going well. The problem is that it will take years to switch back.
I can point you to a HUGE number of companies that will come in with a "Project Manager" and "Requirements Team", talk with people for ~1-6 months and then plan on giving a "Solid" design to let the slaves... er... I mean Indians do the coding. How are these companies doing? Most are not doing so well.
Again, I pay taxes that go to this country. They do NOT. Someone like you I imagine, is getting the extra money from this slave er.. I mean Indian labor.
This isn't my main point though.
I pay taxes on stuff I do here. They do not. That is wrong. Using your thinking it would be ok if I took prisoners over here and let them code, then sold that "service" to people for near free. But I have a feeling that you would be all for that!
My point is that you do NOT pay any tax here for work done in this country. I have NO problem with Indian coders over here working and getting paid. They help pay for our hospitals, schools and military...
It doesn't make sense to tax a car built outside this country and not tax something like software development. The only difference is that it doesn't take much effort to "move" code in to the country. This is why it needs to be taxed much higher than an automobile.
Lets turn it around. Assume that I have a bunch of coders over here; say prison workers doing software development. I then "offer" those services to companies over in India for 1 Euro or 1 dollar an hour. Hmmmm..... I don't have to pay any taxes on that development do I? But YOU pay close to 60% of your income. I could even offer "early release" programs for these guys if they wrote good code and it worked well. This would help quality.
Well speaking for some of the "West". We have NO problem competing with India on codeing, however we pay 60% of our income in taxes. Those taxes go to pay for stuff here in the west. Those coders over in India don't pay anything! So much like cars that are taxed on import, code should also be taxed. Will this happen? No. Will Unions happen? Yes.
The real problem is greed. Do coders over here deserve 70+k a year? Most don't. However, does top management of companies over here deserve >100k/year? Very few do.
That management wants to protect their jobs and salary so they see an easy solution. Farm out all development to slave labor err I mean India.
Now if that development out of the country was taxed at around 100-160%, then both sides would win. The Indians would still get some jobs, the "West" could comete and still pay taxes over here for schools and hospitals etc.
First let me say that I love the Zaurus. I own a Palm V and a IPaq3970. However to say that Palm doesn't have anything to compare to the Zaurus isn't correct.
The new Sony (based off Palm OS) compares quite well to the Zaurus. Both are on similar hardware. Granted that the NEW Zaurus is on the Xscale processor, while the Sony is on the 20x ARM processor. BUT notice that Sharp doesn't say that their apps are 2x as fast! A lot of work has to be done to run great on the new Xscale processor, and I doubt that Sharp did that work. Or if they did, not all the apps are tuned for the new processor. In short they both rock for processing power on a PDA.
Next lets talk video. The Sony has a built in camera. The Sharp doesn't.
The Sony has 320X480 resolution, the Sharp has 320X240. Sony wins.
Both have fold out keyboards.
Both have CF slots
The Sony has a boat load more apps.
The Sharp could be your PDC and Web server and probably run MySQL.
The Sony cost more, but is out now.
The Sony runs Palm OS5. The Sharp runs Linux.
The Sharp has a great browser for surfing on a PDA.
Neither one have a good wireless solution or built in Bluetooth. It must be noted that the Sharp does offer a HUGE wirelss modem attachment, that nobody would want to carry and cost around $40/month. Both do support 802.11b CF wireless cards.
Both devices lack driver support for CF cards compared to Pocket PC devices.
Hmmm looks like I just did a comparision of the two products.
In my opinion either one is great. It just depends on what you want to do. If either one offered a good wireless solution I would have gone with it over my Ipaq. God pocket pc 2002 sucks!
Great question, and one the Novell NetWare guys keep asking. My answer is that if you have a shop of NT, Linux, Unix, Macintosh and NetWare, you will have to know the commands for each one. This can be a pain to do, so what normally happens is that you get someone who becomes an "expert" with one of those systems. Then comes in someone like Microsoft and says how much money they will save by "Standardising" on one NOS.
The other issue is that if some MCSE type is not comfortable at all working on another platform then they will ALLWAYS recommend a Microsoft solution. If they walk up to a system and it has a GUI that is similar to Windows and they can do their job, they tend to be more open to using that technology. I believe that this describes a lot of people, in that they don't want to spend a lot of time learning something totally new.
I was a Novell/Microsoft guy who decided to give Linux a try about two years ago. I found the migration easy. I used the GUI as a crutch until I could learn the command line equivilant, and found Mandrake and RedHat tools very easy to work with. Without the GUI I would still be pushing NetWare and Windows. To be honest probably Windows...
Lastly, I have converted most of our business over to Linux now... It has run great. I do miss a good directory service and the ability to add disk space to a volume on the fly (yes I know about LVMs, but most distros don't default to it) oh yeah and a good free equivilant to Groupwise/Exchange server.
I am glad that we somewhat agree, but on the issue of the cable company getting sued. It will happen. Look at the number of people that have bought things that they "knew" where dangerous and then sued later because it wasn't spelled out enough for them. I am also willing to bet that the cable company didn't display that they were going to load spyware software on the persons pc in the initial contract.
That is kinda funny about them teaching social ethics and justice...
However my point is that a person should be careful or at least take the teachings of these professors with a grain of salt. Most make their living off of the private sectors taxes. Yet have never worked in it. Over the years they have hired and promoted "like minded" teachers and have all but eliminated other points of view. This is kinda weird since most promote "open debates". This has lead to their holier than though attitudes and since most have tenyear (mis-spelled), they don't have to worry about loosing their job.
Does all this invalidate their opinions? Yes and no. Let me turn it around for you. Would you trust Adolf Hitler teaching a class on diversity? Now what if he hired and promoted most of the fellow teachers... Kinda reminds me of Sam Kinnison teaching that class on Vietnamn...
"Capitalism is a short-sighted system that puts profits before people, dollars before the environment."
p es .html
I don't think that you understand what capitalism actually is. Since you recommend the person to take a cource in "social ethics and justice", I will also recommend that the person realize that well over 85% of teachers are die hard liberals and some consider themselves socialist. So please understand that before taking a course. But if we are recommending ways to learn on capitalism, then I would get
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/ta
Sorry for not doing html tags! Just cut and paste.
Now to get this thing back on topic...
What the Cable company is doing is wrong. They will probably get sued over this. The person didn't agree to any EULA, AND probably more importantly the user didn't get the option to counter the contract. Specifically they didn't get an option to do a fair negotiation with the company. This cable company is foolish to do this and it will come back to haunt them. Not a very smart thing, but then they are a monopoly in that area... kinda like socialism...
It is kinda funny you mention "evil of capitalism". I assume that you are taking a shot at capitalism.
This kind of crap is exactly what would NOT happen in a true capitalist system. It is because there is a monopoly on broadband currently that prevents any competition. Most people have only one choice for broadband Cable, some have two DSL and Cable. But guess what!? You only have ONE comany to go with for either one of those. You still have to deal with your local phone company for DSL and unfortunately you only have ONE cable provider per area.
Now if you had a choice of broadband providers and one of those companies did this type of crap, then you can sure as heck bet that their competition would bring out this point.
I don't know how small your company is but ours is 9 people and we use Oracle 9i on Linux. There support has been outstanding. Their sales guys have even been great. We bought ONE copy of Oracle 9i standard DB and two copies of the Internet Developer Suite. How much smaller can you go? I pray that we don't get any smaller!!! :-)
Lets imagine it is a year a go.
You went with MySQL and something goes wrong. You better pray that you set it up with transactions turned on. But being small you probably took what RedHat or Mandrake has by default (no transaction support). I hope that you have good backups. Oh yeah, forget any database triggers. I do realize that these have been addressed, but I still believe that the triggers can only be in ONE language. PHP I think. And there doesn't appear to be a gui equivilant to DbaStudio, at least for data entry.
Lets say you went with Microsoft SQL server- Well you would be real good at upgrades by now. EVERY Microsoft Shop I know has had to do tons of upgrades to their database. Oh yeah in case you haven't noticed their pricing model keeps getting more and more expensive. Also, I hope that you like Windows servers, because that is all it will run on. If you are a Microsoft'er then you don't care though... Also it is my experience that it doesn't scale well at all.
How about PostGreSQL - This actually wouldn't be that bad of a choice, but when you have a problem, you better hope that a newsgroup or the Web can help you. From what I have seen the primary OS for this is Linux, so you better like Linux.
How about if you went with FileMaker Pro? Not a bad choice, BUT still no transaction support AND I believe that it has a limit of 100 tables per database.
How about DB2? Great Database, good support. Not a bad decision. Oh the cost is as much as Oracle though, and IBM tends to be slow on getting new features out. Also, IBM tends to only like you if you buy their hardware and if you are running on one of THEIR NOSes.
How about Microsoft Access? A lot of companies run their business on it! No transaction support and serious multiple user support. I kinda like to think of it as the Titanic. It looks great and is easy to jump on, but it WILL go down and take you with it.
Lets see have I left anyone out.. I won't go in to relational databases like Gemstone, because if you think Oracle is complex...
Well it seems that every decision for a small company sucks. Yes you will find small companies that run EVERY one of the databases I mentioned and then some. All of them have their issues, good people work around those issues. I have built small systems that use MySQL, PostGreSQL, FileMaker Pro and Oracle. They all have their issues, but for what I do Oracle on Linux seems to work well if you can afford it.
Not that I totally disagree with your point, but with ".Net" people will be discouraged, or it will be far more difficult to send the actual document. My guess is that some future version of Office will default to "Send the shortcut".
Now they of course will change Office for the Mac to read from those servers... The data WILL be stored in XML on those servers, so coders will have an easy time with it.
You bring up an interesting point about paranoid people and Microsoft. I have followed Microsoft fairly closely over the last ~18 years and feel comfortable saying that they have never worked with any "standard" out there. They have ALLWAYS developed their own. Can you name an example of any "standard" software technology they have adopted and not changed? A perfect example of this would be ZIP. Why doesn't Microsoft use it instead of CAB files? There are many many more I could use as examples if you would like.
Microsoft has an internal saying "If it is not ours destroy it".
My point is this. A company that has for 18 years been trying to lock people in to their technology, will cause some people to be a bit paranoid.
Wow! You are on it in so many ways.
1st - Having development major development done over in another country should warrant your company name at www.fuckedcompany.com
2nd. The kernel needed to be replaced years ago, and Ray Norta (mis-spelled) knew this. He had Novell heading in a UNIX direction and would have probably been known as a hero now if he would have had his way. Granted the purchase of Word Perfect was a bad idea...
Also, there has been many issues with the boys in California and those in Utah. The California people (in my opinion) wanted to head in the right direction years ago, but they were not allowed.
I have said it before and I will say it again. What if Novell dumped NetWare, or let it die a slow death, in favor of becoming a Linux distro. They could bundle all the crap they currently make and still charge for it. They would have all the source code, and I don't know of any NetWare shop that would switch off of them. I know a few that would strongly consider them.
I do agree that this should probably be some new company because of the bad name Novell has left in MANY I.T. departments.
Wow, someone didn't take their happy pill today :-)
This is far from the dumbest thing I have heard on slashdot.
The point he is trying to make is that yes it is made for tv. Duh! However, in most junkyards you can ask the owner where things are and if you are looking for a good motor, you could find one is a few min. The junkyards by me would even ask what type of engine I would like.
I think that you are hungup about the word Junkyard. I believe in their definition is means a place where they dump their junk. Their junk just happens to fit whatever they are building.
But I couldn't afford it. They tend to use proprietary robes and shoes. Man that stuff is expensive! They tell me it is better than the stuff I would buy at any other cult though, and it looks cooler. It is just sad that you don't have any real selection.
So I then went to join this cult of Micro$oft. They informed me that I misspelled their name and it doesn't have a $ in it. They seemed rather angered about this, but I explained that I have never seen it spelled any other way. Their cult seemed great on the surface, but I realized that I ownly rented their robes, I would have to pay them every three years for new ones if I needed them or not, and that the new robes generally had many problems with them to boot!
I then went to join this penguin cult. Man, they are a friendly bunch, but they seem to be divied in to a bunch of sub cults that hate each other with a passion, but not quite as much as they hate the Micro$oft cult. I kinda liked the Red Top Penguin cult, but everyone kept telling me how much they are becomming the Micro$oft of the penguin cults. They also did something to anger the other cults by standardising on their robes. I then left this cult.
I then tried a cult of the Bee. I found that this cult recently died and so I left.
A house today is MUCH more than it was a few years ago.
People have been saying that forever.
I am not saying go screw yourself and buy the most expensive home on the market you can afford in an area that looks like it is going downhill.
My point is: It is generally better to buy a house than throw money away in rent.
As one poster mentioned, they pay $1,500 in rent. I don't pay near that for a house. Could I rent a place that cost $1,500 a month? Sure! Would it be great? Yes! But at the end of the year I will have spent $18,000 to live and have nothing to show for it. If you got a house that cost $1,500 a month you would be able to deduct a large part of the interest off on your taxes AND you would gain some principle (granted a small amount for the first year).
Even if a house doesn't gain any value, you are still gaining equity in the home. With rent it ALL goes to the Renter.
If you say that you own a modist car, then you should have little to no problem living in a modest house.
Now if houses go up in value, which is normally the case, then you come out way ahead.
So lets say that you pay $1,500 a month in rent. That would equate to around $1,900 - $2,000 a month home after taxes. Granted you might have to pay your PMI, but some lenders will roll that in to the loan so at least you could take that off your taxes.
In very few cases does it make sense to rent.
Well I am just getting around to responding to this... Days later...
Yes I am a funny conservative. I have NO problem competing against anyone in the world, BUT I pay way over 60% of my income in TAXES! Thank God I don't smoke or drink, or it could be worse.
If taxes were around 0%, then I could work for the amount foreign coders make. All I want is a level playing field which makes me sound liberal, but I would love to see the field leveled by taxes being lowered. That of course if NEVER going to happen. So hense my stance on this issue.
I also fall in to this category. I have less than $100.00 on credit card debt, modest car and an ok job. I don't have anywhere 8 months of salary saved up, becuase our family just had some major remodeling done; but this begs the question.
What the heck are you doing in an appartment? You are pissing away your rent every month. If you owned a home, then you would get a tax break (one of the few left). If you have the means to save 8 months of salary, then you should be able to afford a home. My God the interest rates are rock bottom now. What are you waiting for?
At least consider a condo. I would still get a house though...
It was Pong.
Great question, but I would like to add to it.
How long before I.T. unions are as big as other unions. Or do you think that the current unions will join together to form one large union?
Being a conservative in nature it is a shame to see all these votes going to the Democrats...
On a side note, I can't wait for foreign software development to be taxed like imported cars are.
Wow what you said sounds great! No more SQL. CMP Entity beans handles all my SQL issues...
Oh wait. I have to learn ANOTHER language. It is like SQL but yet not the same. Oh and I CAN'T have but simple relationships between tables that map to ONE bean! I want 10 or so tables to map to a "customer" bean.
Oh well I guess that I will just manage the persistance myself... OH MY GOD! trying to manage all the lifecycle stuff is a pain and weird stuff happens if you don't design it correct, and you try and scale it....
Give most of us SQL any day of the week. It is a pain, but at least you know it will work, and your data guys can help tune it. Also you don't have to worry about a lazy coder using instance variables and not cleaning them up with a bean managed persistant bean.
I don't want to claim to be some EJB hater or EJB God, but I do know that for 99% of the people out there a good JSP/Servlet engine is all they need.
I will say that if you want to get over 100 transactions a second (normal transactions 30 inserts/updates and 70 selects) EJB's appear to be the only way to get Java to scale.
They are by no means a silver bullet. The learning curve is steep, and they are difficult to test well.