The term widening implies that the most tech-savvy groups are getting better at the bleeding-edge stuff than the lowest-capability groups. If anything, the lower groups are catching up.
I would venture to say that the current tech boom of the past 20 years has hardly been a linear increase in technology, more of a rising S-curve which levels off at some future point; some groups are ahead of others in grasping and using the tech as their knowledge climbs the slope of the S-curve... it's simply a matter of the other groups catching up to the level spot in tech growth. There, the separation ends.
Now,
this assumes that each group has equal access to the tech, and that's a different story altogether.
When 600 million Chinese, 100 million japanese, 300 million indians, and 40-50 million africans get online, thats when the real online revolution will take place.
This assumes that the electric power and network infrastructure will exist for those extra 1 billion people... I don't doubt that Japan and India can provide it, but China and the African nations? I'll believe it when we see it.
I'm just sick of 'em... goes all the way back to to Judas Priest being sued in the 80's for some downer song they put out that some guy killed himself to.
Next thing you know, the 'Girls Gone Wild' will sue the video producers for getting them drunk and making them flash the camera...
Here's a link to an article which gives some interesting news about Pioneer 10: it's being slowed down by gravity more than they expected. No concrete explanations yet. But hey, new data is new data, right?
The article also states that the power cell still has about 8 watts left, out of an original 165... enough for a signal, but not much else. Pioneer 11's cell ran out a few years ago.
I guess the argument of decreased revenue is at odds with the several stories posted on Slashdot concerning local governments who are looking to save money by using free/PD/GPL software, to reduce license fees from software vendors. The US federal government is a big IT consumer; how much could be *saved* by using GPL software? Will the politicians even consider this notion, or only listen to lobbyists?
The article doesn't say that a bunch of companies are moving to Canada, only that the cost benefits might be there.
As for the coasts vs. the world, I think it's more of a media bias, reflected in the graph shown in the article, where almost all the cities mentioned are on or near the East or West coasts. Plus, not *all* of a company has to move; example: Boeing moving their headquarters to Chicago while manufacturing stays in Washington State.
I *should* stay out of that whole Oklahoma thread at the top, but it calls to mind what college football star (and failed actor) Brian Bosworth once said, that Big 12 towns like Norman, Oklahoma and Lincoln, Nebraska were akin to the worst of what the Soviet Union had to offer.
Doesn't matter... the bulk of consumers who need a PC for the basic stuff (email, word processing) will look at one major feature: the price. $350 is a bit low for a decent PC, sure, but it falls in the price range (say $400-600 American) of other electric appliances: washers, dryers, refrigerators, etc. Certain CEO's 'thin client' visions notwithstanding, the PC *is* becoming a commodity appliance, for the commodity consumer, not the 3r33t d00d who carves his modded case out of solid aluminum. All that level of consumer cares about is that it works, and that they can afford it.
a 'can-miss' experience. Not much of a draw, even for a casual Matrix fan.
Re:I've had an MRE (and I'm not military)
on
The Future of MREs
·
· Score: 1
Well, they're not really designed for consumption over a long period of time.
Back in the days of Y2K panic/mania, I read somewhere that you couldn't eat MREs and nothing else for more than 4 days or you'd get terribly constipated. Now, is that true for everybody, or just the oldster survivalist who needs a little oat bran with his meal #3? Sounds like it would make for some awkward field ops;)
Granted, QA/QC is important in software as it is in a variety of processes, but don't confuse QA with ISO certification... our company proudly displays their various ISO plaques in the front lobby, but it's hard to do QA when there's no separate person to do it because they laid all the 'extra' people off. In fact, I *think* they laid off the person who was responsible for ISO 9000, etc. Hmm...
It's great to work for what may be called a 'progressive' organization... something that on the large scale seems worthwhile. Depends on the organization, though... I worked for one that was politically hamstrung (Republican governor vs. state agency with left-leaning policies), and in the end, I was fed up by what they should have been doing for the people and either couldn't or wouldn't. If you've found one that works, awesome... I guess I'm still looking;)
(and even then, to address the topic, there were good managers and bad managers, of varying levels of tech ability. No uber geeks anywhere in the building, much less in management!)
Amen... 40 years ago, computer scientists thought it was only a matter of time before AI took off in leaps and bounds, based on the notion that LISP programming would drive it all!
Add to that aging vision of the future the notion that an AI 'presence' would be able to get a degree in something; from where, the University of Phoenix Online??? They spam enough, I guess all it would take is for the AI presence to answer the spam email, enroll, and get its digital education...
sheesh, whatever.
Predicting the future is inherently bogus, as it attempts to ascribe progression of continous trends in a world of discrete events, some of which tend towards breaking the trend. Maybe I'm just irritated because I didn't see the line where it lists 'flying cars' as a deliverable item;)
"...once they get an idea-r in dere head, dere's no shiftin' it."
The above Monty Python line would seem to apply to legislative politicians; a herd mentality that just takes one dumb sheep to create some very stupid laws. Chanting refrains of 'do it for the children' and all that nonsense, in hopes of pulling in one more mini-van mom vote.
On the lighter side, I suspect the sons of these Georgia legislators are probably the guys that do the stupid, violent stunts in the 'Backyard Wrestling' video series
(as seen on late night TV ads here in the US).
No l33t male haXORs in the old days: It's all about the lack of Mountain Dew... back then, the only sugary, mind-altering yellow-green drink they had when this guy was a teenager was absinthe.
Oops.... not that article... but this one does.
188 tries, 82 embryos, one cat. If they're going to that much trouble, bring back Morris from the old 9 Lives commercials... that was a cool cat.
Yes, except that 100 years ago, when trusts, combinations (another terms for monopolistic mergers used back then), and other anti-competitive stuff was going down, there existed the political will to stand up to these corporations. Now, such will apparently does not exist. Read up on US President T. Roosevelt, and compare him to the modern day George Dubya... no comparison, really.
OT: haven't seen the new Rollerball movie, but the original one was sort of a morals play, with big monopolistic corporations running everything ('Energy', 'Food', etc.)... if they only knew to include 'Software', the futuristic vision would have been complete;)
Not a bad idea; I'd recommend it myself, having previously worked for the State for many years. But I'd have to guess that only the Feds have the cash to hire people; most state and local govts are crying poverty, due to large unemployment payouts and lower individual and business income tax revenues.
Still, if you want stability in employment, govt. is one way to do it.
... in a recession. A real recession, not the minor dip that the economy took in the early 90's, but the drawn-out crap-fest that was the mid-70's and early 1980's.
For the daily dose of lies, damn lies, and statistics, here's a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps tabs on the US unemployment rate, among many other numbers. The current rate (5.6%) is historically low; between Sept. 1974 and March 1988, it did not go below 5.6%.
Now that's a dry spell for ya.
As for IT, I got out of consulting last year; when I had lunch with my firm's recruiter, I told her that IT consulting was a dying field, and when she mentioned something about going back to school to become a teacher I said 'go for it'. I think she did... more power to her.
Not unless they renamed the two big towers by the river; we were in Morrill Tower (the north one). They really sucked to live in, but we partied so it didn't matter too much.
Back in 1982, one of my roommates did that one better. Having finished a FORTRAN class, complete with decks of punched cards that had no meaning to him (he wasn't a CS guy), he opened the 22nd floor window of our dorm room, and dumped a box of 500 of them out. The updrafts created by the large tower dorm we were in carried some of the cards to the main library, roughly 1/2 mile away...
This thread also reminds me of an old fortune(1) output: "How was Thomas Watson buried? 9 edge down." --- totally cryptic unless you'd ever seen a punch card, and knew that Watson was the founder of IBM.
Excerpt: "Lou Gerstner didn't have to do this. If I just say we're going to spend a billion dollars on this, can I take this off?" said a sweltering McNealy, referring to IBM's loud move to spend vast sums of money on Linux in 2001.
If Sun were a TV show, they would have just had their 'jumping the shark' moment...
I'll assume that you've never worked in a government IT shop; it would explain much of what you've typed.
If you had, you'd know that many states index their pay for IT job classes to keep the people they want to keep; for certain job classes, I know that my ex-coworkers at the State of Ohio are making more than my private sector coworkers here. (Not true for me of course... like Al Pacino said in The Devils' Advocate: "Negotiate? Always!") And of course, fat benefits and real paid vacation, that you can actually *take* if you want to.
You'd also know that many government agencies utilize the latest tech to do what they need to do, especially in geological and engineering capacities. They also work, where possible, with local universities for exchange and cost-sharing of such tech. Cost-sharing and cost cutting is the prime limitation to what governments can do as far as IT goes; you'd probably be appalled to know what little hardware and software is behind the curtain, making everything run.
I could go on, but I suspect this FP troll will already have more than its share of replies.
The 'original' SunOS, SunOS 4.x.x, essentially was/is BSD. SunOS 5.x.x, which they later called Solaris, is largely SVR4, but to make their existing user base happy, they kept a ton of BSD-compatibility items, thus the OS seems BSD-ish if all you run is BSD-style commands.
Older versions of HP/UX weren't based on BSD; they could have been considered their own variant of Unix, as different as they were (possibly due to catering to their HP3000/mpe customer base). With HP/UX 10.x, they started going the POSIX-compatible route.
As for why they choose Linux now? Bandwagon jumping, plain and simple. Yes, we can make a ton of arguments in favor of Linux, but in the end, it's the higher-ups and the sales people that make those 'direction' calls. That's one reason why HP wants Compaq; their own Netserver line couldn't penetrate the market, yet Compaq's offerings would be great to fill that gap in HP's NT (and Linux) offerings.
Slashdot Mirror
I would venture to say that the current tech boom of the past 20 years has hardly been a linear increase in technology, more of a rising S-curve which levels off at some future point; some groups are ahead of others in grasping and using the tech as their knowledge climbs the slope of the S-curve... it's simply a matter of the other groups catching up to the level spot in tech growth. There, the separation ends.
Now, this assumes that each group has equal access to the tech, and that's a different story altogether.
This assumes that the electric power and network infrastructure will exist for those extra 1 billion people... I don't doubt that Japan and India can provide it, but China and the African nations? I'll believe it when we see it.
Next thing you know, the 'Girls Gone Wild' will sue the video producers for getting them drunk and making them flash the camera...
Oops, guess it already happened: Girl Gone Wild Sues, Wins
Guardian UK article
The article also states that the power cell still has about 8 watts left, out of an original 165... enough for a signal, but not much else. Pioneer 11's cell ran out a few years ago.
I guess the argument of decreased revenue is at odds with the several stories posted on Slashdot concerning local governments who are looking to save money by using free/PD/GPL software, to reduce license fees from software vendors. The US federal government is a big IT consumer; how much could be *saved* by using GPL software? Will the politicians even consider this notion, or only listen to lobbyists?
As for the coasts vs. the world, I think it's more of a media bias, reflected in the graph shown in the article, where almost all the cities mentioned are on or near the East or West coasts. Plus, not *all* of a company has to move; example: Boeing moving their headquarters to Chicago while manufacturing stays in Washington State.
I *should* stay out of that whole Oklahoma thread at the top, but it calls to mind what college football star (and failed actor) Brian Bosworth once said, that Big 12 towns like Norman, Oklahoma and Lincoln, Nebraska were akin to the worst of what the Soviet Union had to offer.
Doesn't matter... the bulk of consumers who need a PC for the basic stuff (email, word processing) will look at one major feature: the price. $350 is a bit low for a decent PC, sure, but it falls in the price range (say $400-600 American) of other electric appliances: washers, dryers, refrigerators, etc. Certain CEO's 'thin client' visions notwithstanding, the PC *is* becoming a commodity appliance, for the commodity consumer, not the 3r33t d00d who carves his modded case out of solid aluminum. All that level of consumer cares about is that it works, and that they can afford it.
a 'can-miss' experience. Not much of a draw, even for a casual Matrix fan.
Back in the days of Y2K panic/mania, I read somewhere that you couldn't eat MREs and nothing else for more than 4 days or you'd get terribly constipated. Now, is that true for everybody, or just the oldster survivalist who needs a little oat bran with his meal #3? Sounds like it would make for some awkward field ops ;)
Granted, QA/QC is important in software as it is in a variety of processes, but don't confuse QA with ISO certification... our company proudly displays their various ISO plaques in the front lobby, but it's hard to do QA when there's no separate person to do it because they laid all the 'extra' people off. In fact, I *think* they laid off the person who was responsible for ISO 9000, etc. Hmm...
(and even then, to address the topic, there were good managers and bad managers, of varying levels of tech ability. No uber geeks anywhere in the building, much less in management!)
Add to that aging vision of the future the notion that an AI 'presence' would be able to get a degree in something; from where, the University of Phoenix Online??? They spam enough, I guess all it would take is for the AI presence to answer the spam email, enroll, and get its digital education... sheesh, whatever.
Predicting the future is inherently bogus, as it attempts to ascribe progression of continous trends in a world of discrete events, some of which tend towards breaking the trend. Maybe I'm just irritated because I didn't see the line where it lists 'flying cars' as a deliverable item ;)
The above Monty Python line would seem to apply to legislative politicians; a herd mentality that just takes one dumb sheep to create some very stupid laws. Chanting refrains of 'do it for the children' and all that nonsense, in hopes of pulling in one more mini-van mom vote.
On the lighter side, I suspect the sons of these Georgia legislators are probably the guys that do the stupid, violent stunts in the 'Backyard Wrestling' video series (as seen on late night TV ads here in the US).
Oops.... not that article... but this one does. 188 tries, 82 embryos, one cat. If they're going to that much trouble, bring back Morris from the old 9 Lives commercials... that was a cool cat.
The article says it takes over 100 tries to get one cat pregnant? Sheesh...
Because if nothing else, there's always hope... ;P
OT: haven't seen the new Rollerball movie, but the original one was sort of a morals play, with big monopolistic corporations running everything ('Energy', 'Food', etc.)... if they only knew to include 'Software', the futuristic vision would have been complete ;)
Still, if you want stability in employment, govt. is one way to do it.
For the daily dose of lies, damn lies, and statistics, here's a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps tabs on the US unemployment rate, among many other numbers. The current rate (5.6%) is historically low; between Sept. 1974 and March 1988, it did not go below 5.6%. Now that's a dry spell for ya.
As for IT, I got out of consulting last year; when I had lunch with my firm's recruiter, I told her that IT consulting was a dying field, and when she mentioned something about going back to school to become a teacher I said 'go for it'. I think she did... more power to her.
Not unless they renamed the two big towers by the river; we were in Morrill Tower (the north one). They really sucked to live in, but we partied so it didn't matter too much.
This thread also reminds me of an old fortune(1) output: "How was Thomas Watson buried? 9 edge down." --- totally cryptic unless you'd ever seen a punch card, and knew that Watson was the founder of IBM.
Excerpt: "Lou Gerstner didn't have to do this. If I just say we're going to spend a billion dollars on this, can I take this off?" said a sweltering McNealy, referring to IBM's loud move to spend vast sums of money on Linux in 2001.
If Sun were a TV show, they would have just had their 'jumping the shark' moment...
I'll assume that you've never worked in a government IT shop; it would explain much of what you've typed. If you had, you'd know that many states index their pay for IT job classes to keep the people they want to keep; for certain job classes, I know that my ex-coworkers at the State of Ohio are making more than my private sector coworkers here. (Not true for me of course... like Al Pacino said in The Devils' Advocate: "Negotiate? Always!") And of course, fat benefits and real paid vacation, that you can actually *take* if you want to.
You'd also know that many government agencies utilize the latest tech to do what they need to do, especially in geological and engineering capacities. They also work, where possible, with local universities for exchange and cost-sharing of such tech. Cost-sharing and cost cutting is the prime limitation to what governments can do as far as IT goes; you'd probably be appalled to know what little hardware and software is behind the curtain, making everything run.
I could go on, but I suspect this FP troll will already have more than its share of replies.
Older versions of HP/UX weren't based on BSD; they could have been considered their own variant of Unix, as different as they were (possibly due to catering to their HP3000/mpe customer base). With HP/UX 10.x, they started going the POSIX-compatible route.
As for why they choose Linux now? Bandwagon jumping, plain and simple. Yes, we can make a ton of arguments in favor of Linux, but in the end, it's the higher-ups and the sales people that make those 'direction' calls. That's one reason why HP wants Compaq; their own Netserver line couldn't penetrate the market, yet Compaq's offerings would be great to fill that gap in HP's NT (and Linux) offerings.