What infrastructure would Iraq use in order to sell their bandwidth to the US?
The same infra that's in the US.
Bandwidth cost is a function of infrastructure costs, competition in the marketplace, and the market demand
The average syadmin in America costs $5,000 per month. The same quality, or even better can be hired for about $300 in Iraq and about $200 in India.
Even assuming establishment costs for bandwidth are same, maintenance and running costs overseas would be a tiny fraction of the US costing. It's like outsourcing bandwidth, just like programmers. Too tough to u'stand?
the caste system has always been extremely unfair to the lower castes, a highly shameful, dehumanizing and severe abuse of human rights.
Partly true. However shame has no ideology and does not have caste as it's bearing. Is the degree of shame different in an unemployed American and an unemployed Indian? So long as people are happy doing their jobs in society, there's no shame involved. I belong to the uppermost caste in the land, but freely mingle with, and actually do some functions 'reserved' for other castes.
Talking of human rights, have you considered that all these crusades against 'child labour',;sweatshops' etc. could actually make the problem worse? In my childhood days, it was my ambition to become a milkman - something reserved for a lower caste. Does this knowledge reduce my respect for a milkman or a tree-climber? Please reflect.
But there's no way at all you can justify it, its been sickening and shameful almost from the beginning..
OTOH, is it less sickening or less shameful when the richest man in the world, a convicted capitalist - lectures to Indians, and enriches himself at their cost? For providing sub-standard products in return? What's the difference between a high-caste crook and a high-profile cheat? Zilch.
Poverty knows no shame. The rich and glorious aren't the same either. High caste Indians treated as third-rate citizens abroad need to be more ashamed and sickened...but their sense of prestige is numbed by the false pride of affluence.
There is no simple answer to the point you raised, and there are many facets to the issue. Respecting people of all castes and faiths (as individuals) will go a long way in mitigating the problem.
In India, Broadband is 40 cents an hour, much less than $1 that the Iraqi ISP charges. Indian ISPs still make profits.
The dollar is inflated so much, it renders any comparison useless. Going by the article, Iraq could make more money selling bandwidth to the US than oil. But that would never happen, would it?
EVMs are programmed in assembly language, have a serial port to interface to the counting PC, and are very simple devices. Less than 70 machines failed when 11,000 were used last year - and most were fake votes and rigging, not machine failures or bugs.
Tech support normally involves calling up the Area Officer and replacing a new machine. The machine itself costs about $100, IIRC.
I didn't believe it was possible for an Indian to be more clueless than others, on Indian matters - thanks for teaching me.
If Indians paid less for crappy proprietary s/w, started beleiving in their strengths and stopped listening to ' defer technologically advanced' suggestions, they'd prosper faster.
AIDS is more of a social problem than a pathological one, atleast in India. Indians pay more money to Microsoft, than AIDS drugs every year. Addiction to MSware is tougher to cure than Affliction with AIDS.
And so on... please, stop trolling and continue with whatever you're doing right now. It's better if you use your energies to make the US a better place, than send you 2 cent suggestions to improve your native land, from remote. There are better qualified natives to take care of that.
Again.. you seem to have forgotten to factor vote-bank politics. The local 'leader' ensures all citizens in his area, especially the poor, get the card. So, there's your answer to discrimination.
Secondly, I now shifted my residence about 30 km (20 miles..) from the city and lots of poor 'caste' people live nearby. ALL of them have got the cards sponsored by the 'area chief', who actually does a lot of good work. He's built us a good concrete road, he's doing desilting of a big lake nearby (12 acres - $ 100,000) and lots of other developmental work. 75 cents a card for 10,000 people isn't a big deal.
But exactly how many people eligible for voting are there? Obviously, a significant number of the about 1 billion inhabitants will be under the legal voting age.
About 40% of the population...
And then, how about the caste system?... Are people from the lowests castes (or the caste-less) discouraged from voting in any way?
Actually, it's the other way round. People from the lowest income levels are actively enlisted for voting, since they can be easily induced with comparatively lesser money.
OTOH, voter apathy among middle-class is quite common in India.
And does the mandatory presentation of an ID-card prevent many of these people from voting?
No way.. refer above, it's encouraged.
Is there anyone who can provide a decent, and honest, background on this? It is an interesting sociological issue.
Actually the caste system existed in India for 'functional reasons' and not as a means of discrimination. Politicians have groomed these into vote-banks by offering money and power.
Most caste-names are actually job-functions (like Carpenters, Woods, Smiths, Masons, Butchers you come across in Western socities). Present social conditions have actually made things screwed up for all concerned. A case in point - the coconut-tree climber charges about 20 cents a tree, which yields about 20 nuts per month. These guys are heavily sought-after and start charging 40 cents plus 2 nuts (about 10 cents) now. They send their children to 'convent' schools, who in turn learn skills different from their 'inherited' skills. Most 'caste' people in the current generation aren't capable of performing their roles honorably any more. And so it goes on...
I don't understand advanced techies... they seem to depend on Hotmail spam for: 1. Free diplomas and education 2. Good credit checks 3. Low mortgage rates on their never-ending debts. 4. Service Packs 5. Viruses 6. Anti-viruses 7. Elongated pelvic protrusions. 8. Mammiary Hyper-plasia etc. etc...
Saves a lot of money, the technology and hardware is indigenous, no additional security issues as compared to the ballot-box-ink-paper technique etc.
All in all, a sensible decision. The voter electronic id-cards are also almost completed - about 75 cents a card. When that gets fully completed, elections in the biggest democracy in the world can be conducted smoothly.
It is interesting that they chose FireWire over other technologies
Nice point... if I remember Bruce Perens right, FireWire is muddled with proprietary drivers/ interface s/w - considering that Linux has been adopted by major Electronics giants, FireWire is a bad choice.
And secondly, considering interactive Ecommerce is still not a reality, I doubt home eqpt will start interacting anytime soon.
I guess you're trying to back off, after making a very forceful and assertive (though redundant) remark. To quote you:
1. So, to the question "will Open Source kill my job?", the answer is generally "no".
followed by:
2. India will kill your job (well, those of you who are not in India). And I don't know what you should do about that.
Statement 2 adds nothing to your logical answer to the question on Open Source. Secondly, to assert that India will kill your job, coming from a person of your stature - well, I felt it was a bit disingeneous. It could've been avoided altogether.
Now, to the parent post: 1. Well, I have nothing against tech-literate people in India getting jobs and poor people in India getting fed and housed. And hopefully both will happen.
It's nice to see that you send your good wishes to people of other nations. It might interest you to note that despite the (relatively) poor economic conditions in India, the people have devleoped and advanced tremendously over centuries, and make themselves counted amongst the top. Part of the reason for this, is the strong links to culture, good family values and systems (appreciated by Mr.Bush recently) and an independent outlook. Indians are also generally soft-spoken, mild-mannered and humble, values which are often mistaken as weaknesses; while actually being essential ingredients for long-term success (especially the Open Source Movement, Gandhi as an oft-quoted example here).
and lastly,
Living here in the US and making a living is the immediate concern of a good many people. I don't have much to offer them in the way of advice.
Actually, this was not the question originally asked, but lemme add my perspective here. It is improper to assume that people of the US can make a living only through IT and the computing field. People were prosperous before computers in the US (many would say more so) and one wishes they'd be better off now and in the future.
Unemployment figures in India are 20 times worse than in the US, and even employed people make only about $150 a month. Thankfully, this amount feeds a family of 4, provides 70 channels of television,incldg. the CNN and BBC, about 1,000 sq ft of housing and about $50 in savings! There is a feeling in India that too many Indians are employed in IT, which is a false economy.
People all over the world can be happy and live honorable lives if they spend some time planning for their future, and some effort in acquiring the skills required. And yes, staying calm and focussed helps a lot, as any Indian would advise.
It's crazy these reports... once my DSL connection crashed, and the error message asked me whether it should send the dump to Microsoft! If this ain't classical dumb idiotic programming, I dunno what is. Can' MS store the dump in a file and ask for transmission the link is up?
you can't expect me to learn how to lock the car just to avoid crooks, can you?
The fact is cookies are seldom essential, to improve the browsing experience. Car locks serve only to secure the car, no other useful purpose I can think of. Would you like if you had to use 6 keys to secure your car, and just 1 to open it? Would you like it if you had to change locks and keys every week to ensure no one 'sampled' your key when you were watching a movie? Can your car key be compromised, except without an identical key, or any other way without your knowledge?
Think before you compare cookies to car locks.. What next, Windows to Linux comparison?
If you configure your browser to accept no cookies, some cookies, or all cookies, isn't that consent for websites to SET the cookies?
What if your browser came pre-configured? What if you open Hotmail, and it says you need to enale Cookies to use it? What if sites used Cookies for purposes other than for the intended browsing experience?
Wake up folks, know how to operate your browser.
More than 60% Slashdotters use IE, use the default settings of Slashdot -/. can simply make the default threshold as -1 and ask users to change it... why should I learn to use my browser to avoid crooks?
Well, to be fair, Muhammed and Jiang are two of the more common names in the world
But this is the Computing World, not the entire world. It sounds very fishy when some chap in Pakistan finds a Passport related bug, when the no. of American users, crackers and hackers outnumber the Pakistani folks by over 100 times! As a rule, most folks who get arrested, sued, punished and publicised are from countries regarded as anti-US during the cold-war, at any rate.
Seeing you go to such great lengths to sidestep key-logging s/w; have you considered the enormous risks using Windooze PCs at kiosks? You.Net Passport Password - gateway to Hotmail is stored in plain text, it only gives you a false sense of security.
Recently, you'd have read about the Passport Password reset bug - how can you be sure if it isn't secret any longer? The best thing, I guess, is to keep using the internet normally, at home, stay with Linux, Mozilla Firebird, stop the pop-ups and stay secure. At a kiosk, forget about security - there's no way you can check the installed s/w in the PC there. Keep a watch on your card bills - that's about all you can practically do.
Most MS shills would be busy defending MS in the previous article, so I'll do it for them:
1. Even Linux can be hacked - it only takes 8 seconds longer.
2. Actually, hacking a password is no big deal. In fact, you don't need to hack a password to hack a Windows PC at all!
3. Why bother? You don't have any data right? Okay.. now if your system get used to transmit spam, you could get to Court? Fear not! MS will pay your legal costs.
4. Just install Win2K3... you've got to change your password every 2 minutes! No one can hack it that fast - you're safe.
I highly doubt this will impact their competitive stance against other systems, but what it could do is reduce the duration of the sales cycle, and thus help their overall performance as a company.
Huh... you sound as if all Corporate Buying Decisions were just waiting for this Great New License?? This won't reduce the sales cycle, it will simply reduce sales. Till date, none even suspected that buying MS products could result in litigation, now MS has gone and ADVERTISED IT ON SLASHDOT.
Slashdot Mirror
What infrastructure would Iraq use in order to sell their bandwidth to the US?
The same infra that's in the US.
Bandwidth cost is a function of infrastructure costs, competition in the marketplace, and the market demand
The average syadmin in America costs $5,000 per month. The same quality, or even better can be hired for about $300 in Iraq and about $200 in India.
Even assuming establishment costs for bandwidth are same, maintenance and running costs overseas would be a tiny fraction of the US costing. It's like outsourcing bandwidth, just like programmers. Too tough to u'stand?
-
the caste system has always been extremely unfair to the lower castes, a highly shameful, dehumanizing and severe abuse of human rights.
;sweatshops' etc. could actually make the problem worse? In my childhood days, it was my ambition to become a milkman - something reserved for a lower caste. Does this knowledge reduce my respect for a milkman or a tree-climber? Please reflect.
Partly true. However shame has no ideology and does not have caste as it's bearing. Is the degree of shame different in an unemployed American and an unemployed Indian? So long as people are happy doing their jobs in society, there's no shame involved. I belong to the uppermost caste in the land, but freely mingle with, and actually do some functions 'reserved' for other castes.
Talking of human rights, have you considered that all these crusades against 'child labour',
But there's no way at all you can justify it, its been sickening and shameful almost from the beginning..
OTOH, is it less sickening or less shameful when the richest man in the world, a convicted capitalist - lectures to Indians, and enriches himself at their cost? For providing sub-standard products in return? What's the difference between a high-caste crook and a high-profile cheat? Zilch.
Poverty knows no shame. The rich and glorious aren't the same either. High caste Indians treated as third-rate citizens abroad need to be more ashamed and sickened...but their sense of prestige is numbed by the false pride of affluence.
There is no simple answer to the point you raised, and there are many facets to the issue. Respecting people of all castes and faiths (as individuals) will go a long way in mitigating the problem.
-
In India, Broadband is 40 cents an hour, much less than $1 that the Iraqi ISP charges. Indian ISPs still make profits.
The dollar is inflated so much, it renders any comparison useless. Going by the article, Iraq could make more money selling bandwidth to the US than oil. But that would never happen, would it?
-
EVMs are programmed in assembly language, have a serial port to interface to the counting PC, and are very simple devices. Less than 70 machines failed when 11,000 were used last year - and most were fake votes and rigging, not machine failures or bugs.
Tech support normally involves calling up the Area Officer and replacing a new machine. The machine itself costs about $100, IIRC.
-
I didn't believe it was possible for an Indian to be more clueless than others, on Indian matters - thanks for teaching me.
If Indians paid less for crappy proprietary s/w, started beleiving in their strengths and stopped listening to ' defer technologically advanced' suggestions, they'd prosper faster.
AIDS is more of a social problem than a pathological one, atleast in India. Indians pay more money to Microsoft, than AIDS drugs every year. Addiction to MSware is tougher to cure than Affliction with AIDS.
And so on... please, stop trolling and continue with whatever you're doing right now. It's better if you use your energies to make the US a better place, than send you 2 cent suggestions to improve your native land, from remote. There are better qualified natives to take care of that.
-
Again.. you seem to have forgotten to factor vote-bank politics. The local 'leader' ensures all citizens in his area, especially the poor, get the card. So, there's your answer to discrimination.
Secondly, I now shifted my residence about 30 km (20 miles..) from the city and lots of poor 'caste' people live nearby. ALL of them have got the cards sponsored by the 'area chief', who actually does a lot of good work. He's built us a good concrete road, he's doing desilting of a big lake nearby (12 acres - $ 100,000) and lots of other developmental work. 75 cents a card for 10,000 people isn't a big deal.
-
Only the machines are electronic. Manual registers and dye-on-fingers are still used as a second-level check.
-
But exactly how many people eligible for voting are there? Obviously, a significant number of the about 1 billion inhabitants will be under the legal voting age.
About 40% of the population...
And then, how about the caste system?... Are people from the lowests castes (or the caste-less) discouraged from voting in any way?
Actually, it's the other way round. People from the lowest income levels are actively enlisted for voting, since they can be easily induced with comparatively lesser money.
OTOH, voter apathy among middle-class is quite common in India.
And does the mandatory presentation of an ID-card prevent many of these people from voting?
No way.. refer above, it's encouraged.
Is there anyone who can provide a decent, and honest, background on this? It is an interesting sociological issue.
Actually the caste system existed in India for 'functional reasons' and not as a means of discrimination. Politicians have groomed these into vote-banks by offering money and power.
Most caste-names are actually job-functions (like Carpenters, Woods, Smiths, Masons, Butchers you come across in Western socities). Present social conditions have actually made things screwed up for all concerned. A case in point - the coconut-tree climber charges about 20 cents a tree, which yields about 20 nuts per month. These guys are heavily sought-after and start charging 40 cents plus 2 nuts (about 10 cents) now. They send their children to 'convent' schools, who in turn learn skills different from their 'inherited' skills. Most 'caste' people in the current generation aren't capable of performing their roles honorably any more. And so it goes on...
-
India is holding their entire election online
Not so fast... they use Electronic voting machines, assembly language programmed devices. No internet voting yet.
Think Indians are dumb to use technology that's so prone to fraud?
-
I don't understand advanced techies... they seem to depend on Hotmail spam for:
1. Free diplomas and education
2. Good credit checks
3. Low mortgage rates on their never-ending debts.
4. Service Packs
5. Viruses
6. Anti-viruses
7. Elongated pelvic protrusions.
8. Mammiary Hyper-plasia
etc. etc...
Funny.
-
The dye is still in vogue, despite electronic cards. So is the manual register. This is used to counter-check any fake / bogus voting.
-
Saves a lot of money, the technology and hardware is indigenous, no additional security issues as compared to the ballot-box-ink-paper technique etc.
All in all, a sensible decision. The voter electronic id-cards are also almost completed - about 75 cents a card. When that gets fully completed, elections in the biggest democracy in the world can be conducted smoothly.
-
The guy was trying to suck up a cake through a fiber optic cable ;-)
Downloading physical objects through the net? Fishing net maybe, not the Internet.
Today's fact is tomorrow's fiction.
-
It is interesting that they chose FireWire over other technologies
Nice point... if I remember Bruce Perens right, FireWire is muddled with proprietary drivers/ interface s/w - considering that Linux has been adopted by major Electronics giants, FireWire is a bad choice.
And secondly, considering interactive Ecommerce is still not a reality, I doubt home eqpt will start interacting anytime soon.
-
I guess you're trying to back off, after making a very forceful and assertive (though redundant) remark. To quote you:
1. So, to the question "will Open Source kill my job?", the answer is generally "no".
followed by:
2. India will kill your job (well, those of you who are not in India). And I don't know what you should do about that.
Statement 2 adds nothing to your logical answer to the question on Open Source. Secondly, to assert that India will kill your job, coming from a person of your stature - well, I felt it was a bit disingeneous. It could've been avoided altogether.
Now, to the parent post:
1. Well, I have nothing against tech-literate people in India getting jobs and poor people in India getting fed and housed. And hopefully both will happen.
It's nice to see that you send your good wishes to people of other nations. It might interest you to note that despite the (relatively) poor economic conditions in India, the people have devleoped and advanced tremendously over centuries, and make themselves counted amongst the top. Part of the reason for this, is the strong links to culture, good family values and systems (appreciated by Mr.Bush recently) and an independent outlook. Indians are also generally soft-spoken, mild-mannered and humble, values which are often mistaken as weaknesses; while actually being essential ingredients for long-term success (especially the Open Source Movement, Gandhi as an oft-quoted example here).
and lastly,
Living here in the US and making a living is the immediate concern of a good many people. I don't have much to offer them in the way of advice.
Actually, this was not the question originally asked, but lemme add my perspective here. It is improper to assume that people of the US can make a living only through IT and the computing field. People were prosperous before computers in the US (many would say more so) and one wishes they'd be better off now and in the future.
Unemployment figures in India are 20 times worse than in the US, and even employed people make only about $150 a month. Thankfully, this amount feeds a family of 4, provides 70 channels of television,incldg. the CNN and BBC, about 1,000 sq ft of housing and about $50 in savings! There is a feeling in India that too many Indians are employed in IT, which is a false economy.
People all over the world can be happy and live honorable lives if they spend some time planning for their future, and some effort in acquiring the skills required. And yes, staying calm and focussed helps a lot, as any Indian would advise.
-
Maybe it's possible that they didn't count those
It's crazy these reports... once my DSL connection crashed, and the error message asked me whether it should send the dump to Microsoft! If this ain't classical dumb idiotic programming, I dunno what is. Can' MS store the dump in a file and ask for transmission the link is up?
-
Keeps Apple away.
-
you can't expect me to learn how to lock the car just to avoid crooks, can you?
The fact is cookies are seldom essential, to improve the browsing experience. Car locks serve only to secure the car, no other useful purpose I can think of.
Would you like if you had to use 6 keys to secure your car, and just 1 to open it? Would you like it if you had to change locks and keys every week to ensure no one 'sampled' your key when you were watching a movie?
Can your car key be compromised, except without an identical key, or any other way without your knowledge?
Think before you compare cookies to car locks..
What next, Windows to Linux comparison?
-
If you configure your browser to accept no cookies, some cookies, or all cookies, isn't that consent for websites to SET the cookies?
/. can simply make the default threshold as -1 and ask users to change it ... why should I learn to use my browser to avoid crooks?
What if your browser came pre-configured?
What if you open Hotmail, and it says you need to enale Cookies to use it?
What if sites used Cookies for purposes other than for the intended browsing experience?
Wake up folks, know how to operate your browser.
More than 60% Slashdotters use IE, use the default settings of Slashdot -
-
Will now compel Microsoft to tell users exactly what information it is extracting.. Great!
We Know Where You Went Today
-
Well, to be fair, Muhammed and Jiang are two of the more common names in the world
But this is the Computing World, not the entire world. It sounds very fishy when some chap in Pakistan finds a Passport related bug, when the no. of American users, crackers and hackers outnumber the Pakistani folks by over 100 times! As a rule, most folks who get arrested, sued, punished and publicised are from countries regarded as anti-US during the cold-war, at any rate.
-
Seeing you go to such great lengths to sidestep key-logging s/w; have you considered the enormous risks using Windooze PCs at kiosks? You .Net Passport Password - gateway to Hotmail is stored in plain text, it only gives you a false sense of security.
Recently, you'd have read about the Passport Password reset bug - how can you be sure if it isn't secret any longer? The best thing, I guess, is to keep using the internet normally, at home, stay with Linux, Mozilla Firebird, stop the pop-ups and stay secure. At a kiosk, forget about security - there's no way you can check the installed s/w in the PC there. Keep a watch on your card bills - that's about all you can practically do.
-
Sometime back, Passport passwords were hacked: Muhammed from Pakistan.
Adobe's eBook reader was cracked : Skylarov.
and now, Jiang.
Why isn't it Rob or Pete or Chris, ever??
-
Most MS shills would be busy defending MS in the previous article, so I'll do it for them:
1. Even Linux can be hacked - it only takes 8 seconds longer.
2. Actually, hacking a password is no big deal. In fact, you don't need to hack a password to hack a Windows PC at all!
3. Why bother? You don't have any data right? Okay.. now if your system get used to transmit spam, you could get to Court? Fear not! MS will pay your legal costs.
4. Just install Win2K3... you've got to change your password every 2 minutes! No one can hack it that fast - you're safe.
-
I highly doubt this will impact their competitive stance against other systems, but what it could do is reduce the duration of the sales cycle, and thus help their overall performance as a company.
Huh... you sound as if all Corporate Buying Decisions were just waiting for this Great New License?? This won't reduce the sales cycle, it will simply reduce sales. Till date, none even suspected that buying MS products could result in litigation, now MS has gone and ADVERTISED IT ON SLASHDOT.
Crazy!
-